The Smell of Evil

by Birkin, Charles

  It was ten minutes past eight before the man arrived to open up the mortuary and daylight was probing half heartedly through the dirt of the windows.

  As it was, Buzz would be late for work, and Lofty wasn’t going to be left behind holding the baby, not for no teenaged nymphomaniac he wasn’t, let alone letting himself in for God knew what trumped up charges. Body snatching . . . breaking in . . . rape . . . they’d throw the book at them if they got nicked.

  As they had surmised, the caretaker was old, and Buzz and Lofty had no difficulty whatsoever in evading him. One blow in the chest had sent him reeling back against the iron railings, and another in the face had been enough to temporarily blind him and splinter his spectacles.

  When the old fellow had pulled himself up and had gone painfully through the doorway the sound of the boys’ running feet had already faded away.

  He found Rosie crouched in the chair behind the desk, clasping with desperation at the hand of the dead girl. The old man had spoken to her gently. He could get no sense out of her, no sense at all. She kept on repeating: “It’s morning, and I’ve been out all night. What can I say to my Mam? What can I tell her? She’ll be ever so mad at me. Ever so.” On the floor at her feet the radio was chattering away to itself.

  In the course of the dark hours, and in spite of Rosie’s frenzied struggles, the boys had made the most of their opportunity. It had been necessary to keep warm and they had had to make the time pass in some way. She’d known well enough what was expected of her when she had come along with them.

  They did not anticipate any retaliation from Spike Logan. Their lot was more than a match for his any day of the week, and Rosie didn’t count. She wasn’t important. She wasn’t anybody really, and they could deny everything if she turned nasty. But she wouldn’t. She would know better. She was only a little tramp, a tagger-on. It wasn’t as if she’d been someone special, like Rene Harper or Kitty Walters who were Spike’s own property.

  No, Rosie wouldn’t open her trap, not if she knew what was good for her. If she so much as gave a cheep they’d “do” her properly, and she knew it.

  And she’d put away a fair share of their drink—hadn’t she?

  The old man was able to do nothing with her. She refused to let go of the dead girl. She kept on stroking her hand and pressing her own lips against the set ones, trying to breathe into her lungs. “She’s not dead,” she kept on saying. “I saw her eyelids move, really I did. And corpses don’t go fluttering their eyelids, do they? She’s foxing, that’s all. Can’t you see she’s only foxing? If you give me time I can bring her back.” She gazed up imploringly at the old man. “But what about my Mam?” she said. “She’s ever so strict with me, really she is.”

  The caretaker looked sideways at her flushed face, uncertain as to what action he could take. His glance took in the torn clothes, the trembling lips and inward unseeing stare. She’d gone round the bend proper and no mistake. It was no use asking who her Mam was or where she lived. She’d never tell him that. He’d best fetch a policeman—or policewoman—and they’d know what to do. He’d have to report the break-in anyway.

  Poor little trollop! Some girls didn’t have a chance these days—not with all those young hooligans around with money to spend and no discipline. She wasn’t no more than a kid, and the one lying there on the floor hadn’t been much older. It was a shame right enough.

  “No,” said the old man, “you can’t leave her all alone. You stay just where you are. I won’t be gone long—not above a few minutes.”

  He climbed painfully up the steps, steadying himself with the handrail. He was very handicapped by the loss of his spectacles. He’d get a constable to come back with him. That body sprawled there on the chipped tiled floor . . . he couldn’t move it without help. Not at his age, and with his bad back, he couldn’t.

  LITTLE BOY BLUE

  Moira Latten had not herself stayed at Stonethorpe. When, as a child, she had first been taken for a holiday to Cleeness the house had been pointed out to her, and on subsequent occasions she had gone there to tea. It was her mother who, in her youth, used to be sent to the Misses Wallace to recuperate after various infantile ailments, under the care of the three kindly ladies who owned the house, which they let out as lodgings.

  Stonethorpe was one of a row of semi-detached Victorian villas that faced the sea. There was a road which separated their neat and formal front gardens from the bowling green, now seldom used, behind which lay the sandhills and the beach.

  Cleeness had expanded a good deal since the war, but the expansion had taken place at the other end of the town, beyond the shopping center and the clock tower and the Amusement Park, until it had petered out at the new Butlin’s Holiday Camp, and the vicinity in which Stonethorpe was situated was hardly changed. It had become more of a backwater and it was shabbier, but otherwise it had remained much the same as when Moira had last seen it.

  For several years, when her two children were growing up, Moira’s mother, Mrs. Soskin, had chosen to take a bungalow in Cleeness for the summer, preferring it to the more select resorts. It had been usually the same bungalow, The Look Out, and it had been rambling and white stuccoed and had stood on the edge of the sandhills, surrounded by a defeatist garden in which practically nothing but sea-thrift and marigolds and surges of nasturtiums would grow. To remedy this floral sparsity there was a lot of gravel drive lined with whitewashed boulders. The town was on a bleak part of the Lincolnshire coast and was considered to be bracing, and certainly the bathing there had been more of an endurance test than a genuine pleasure, necessitating as it did brisk rubs down with towels and reviving cups of Bovril which had been forced between chattering teeth.

  Moira had retained a strange nostalgia for these somewhat Spartan holidays and so, with the passage of time, when her own son, Oliver, had been recovering from a severe attack of measles, she had remembered the Misses Wallace’s establishment and had written on chance to inquire if they still received guests. Their reply had said that they did so on occasion, but since they were well advanced in years they could no longer undertake to provide dinner at night.

  Moira and Oliver arrived at Stonethorpe late on a Friday afternoon, and immediately upon entering the house, so unchanged was the atmosphere, that Moira had felt that she had stepped back not only into her own nursery days but even into those of her mother. They were the sole visitors and had been given the front sitting-room for their exclusive use, and the room across the hall was to be set aside for the serving of their meals. Their bedrooms on the first floor faced the sea and were adjacent to the only bathroom.

  Miss Dolly Wallace had been delighted to see her. Yes, she well remembered the days when they used to meet, when Moira had been “so high”. And how was dear Mrs. Soskin? Keeping in good health, she hoped. How time flew! It seemed like yesterday! She and her sister Connie had been saying so last night, and to imagine that Moira herself now had a child of her own, and such a big boy for eight. Quite the little man! No doubt Moira had heard that they had lost their sister Annie? She had been the youngest of the family, seventy-one, and the first of them to go. It only went to show, didn’t it? Moira must come down after tea and have a word with Connie. She was keeping very well really, had retained all her faculties, but nowadays could not manage the stairs.

  Yes, it was strange to think that between them they had run the house for close on eighty years, ever since Mrs. Wallace had been brought to Stonethorpe as a bride by her husband in eighteen eighty-eight when it had been newly built, and all their family had been born there. Until a short while back the management of the establishment had been no trouble, but finally they had been reduced to a single girl as staff, and now they had no one. Girls could pick and choose, couldn’t they, and they didn’t seem to fancy domestic work.

  Miss Wallace patted Oliver on the shoulder and told him to make himself at home and then l
eft Moira to settle in, telling her that tea would be ready in ten minutes and that there would also be a snack at a quarter past seven.

  Oliver adored Cleeness. It had all the basic requirements for a boy of his age. Miles of sands studded with rockpools, and the dunes in which he could dig caves and roll down their sides. It was the beginning of May, and except for Saturdays and Sundays the beach was practically empty. Spring had come late, but when it had arrived it had been an exceptionally warm one, and paddling and sunbathing could be indulged in as well as the building of sandcastles for the incoming tide to attack and obliterate. They spent nearly all their day in the open air, and right from the start Oliver’s strength had improved.

  Moira had planned to stay at Cleeness for two weeks. She did not mind the uneventfulness of the routine, for in the evenings she was able to continue with her work. She was a contributor to several of the women’s magazines for which she wrote articles and short stories, and she was glad to be freed from all domestic chores.

  It was at the end of their fourth day that Oliver had come running in to her in a state of gleeful gratification. Since Stonethorpe commanded the bowling green and sand dunes Moira used to allow him to go out by himself after tea, with the proviso that he should not stray too far, and that at half past six she would emerge to retrieve him. On this Tuesday evening, pink with excitement, he came jumping down the sandhills with the news that he had made a friend. His name was Sammy and, being seven and a half, he was a year younger than Oliver. He was staying nearby, although he had not mentioned the name of the house. Moira must come immediately and meet him, and could he please ask him to lunch tomorrow?

  “Of course you can, darling,” Moira said. “We’ll go and find him now and invite him, and I’ll see if Miss Wallace will give us chops and ice cream.”

  Oliver led the way, pulling her along behind him in his eagerness, but there was no sign of Sammy and the happy anticipation faded from his face. “You’ll meet him again in the morning,” said Moira comfortingly. “We’ve got the beach almost to ourselves, so you can’t miss him and you’ll be able to ask him then.”

  After Oliver had had his bath and was in bed Moira went up to his room to say good-night to him and, as always, he was loath to let her go, choosing for delaying tactics to give her a detailed account of his encounter with Sammy. “He’s going away to boarding school next term, and he lives at Uxton, which is a village outside Nottingham, and he has sixpence a week pocket money—which I don’t think is very much, do you?—and he wears a sailor suit with a ribbon on the hat saying h.m.s. Valiant, which I think is rather babyish and I told him so and he didn’t seem to mind a bit and said lots of boys have them and that I was dotty, and he’s got a bucket and a wooden spade, and his father’s got a big grocer’s shop, and there’s an older sister who’s called Mavis.” Oliver paused for breath before he went on: “He knows an awful lot, the names of all the different kinds of seaweed and shells and anemones, and all about the tides and the stars, and he told me a story about a ghost ship called the Marie something or other, and he collects stamps and fossils and his mother makes him go to dancing class and he can’t swim yet.” Oliver sounded rather reassured by his lack of this latter accomplishment.

  Moira laughed. “Neither can I,” she said, “and neither can you! Maybe there are some baths in the town where you and Sammy could have lessons. I’ll find out. It’s still a bit cold for the sea.” She bent down to receive his hug. “I’m so pleased you’ve made a friend. There’re another ten days during which you can play together. Good night darling. Sleep tight!”

  Her hand was on the door-knob when Oliver was in full spate again. “And he knows all the songs the pierrots sing. They have competitions for the children. I’ve never seen any pierrots. Can we go one day?”

  “If you like,” said Moira. “They used to be an attraction in every seaside town, but I thought they’d been dropped these days except on the big piers. We’ll go on Friday if you want to. I wonder where they are? I expect on the other side of the Amusement Park.”

  Oliver held out his arms and she could not resist going back to give him another kiss. “Good night, Mummy,” he said. “It is all rather super, isn’t it?”

  Wednesday, however, brought a disappointment. It was a glorious morning and a few people made their appearance on the sands, but Sammy was not amongst them. Oliver spent most of the morning and afternoon looking for him but without success. A small girl with rabbit teeth and spectacles, by the name of Freda, tried to scrape acquaintance, but it was not the same thing and he gave her no encouragement. Oliver experienced a sense of anti-climax. Perhaps Sammy’s mother had been called back suddenly to Uxton and had taken him with her and he would never meet him again.

  Moira was delighted by Oliver’s progress. He was already a different child from the pallid little boy of the previous week. Cleeness, she thought gratefully, must indeed be as health giving as its publicity claimed, and at this, the quiet end, it was really ideal for children. No dangerous currents, no steep cliffs and no traffic except for an occasional tradesman’s van. There were, it is true, buried strands of rusted barbed wire concealed amongst the hummocks, relics of forgotten defenses erected against invasion by the Germans in World War One, and there were, too, some scattered patches of quicksand when the tide was out, but all the residents knew their exact locations and they took care to brief the visitors so that they could keep away from them. Otherwise there were no perils for the unwary.

  Sammy’s withdrawal from Oliver’s life lasted until Sunday evening and then, when the last of the trippers were trailing back to their cars, Oliver found him again. He was solemn and shy and was unwilling to say where he had been or why he had kept away from the beach, and Oliver forbore from pressing him. Parents, as he knew himself, could be odd and unpredictable and their actions difficult of explanation, and he did not wish to cause him embarrassment by persistent questioning.

  It was Sammy’s suggestion that they should leave the dunes and, as the tide was turning, build a castle near the water line which they could strengthen and defend defiantly and breathlessly against the siege of the waves. He proved to be an expert builder and under his tuition a most intricate and impressive fortress was constructed which they decorated with a pattern of pebbles and oyster shells.

  When Moira came across the dunes to collect Oliver she was rather vexed at being forced to walk for such a long way before she could shout to him. He was a tiny dot between the arc of the sky and desolate sweep of the sands. He came to her reluctantly. His shorts and gym shoes were soaked, and he made no protest when his mother told him that he had gone beyond their agreed boundary and that he had stayed out too late.

  Rather to his surprise she did not include Sammy in these strictures and, since Oliver saw that she was annoyed, and suspected that if prompted she would probably put the blame on to Sammy for having led him astray, he neither looked back nor referred to him, especially as his friend had shown small pleasure on receiving the invitation to lunch at Stonethorpe, but instead had said firmly that it would be better if they were to meet each other away from the company of grown-ups, who were frequently bent on spoiling everything. His veiled ultimatum had implied that if their friendship were to continue it would have to be a secret one, and on his own terms, with no adult interference.

  As Oliver volunteered nothing more after this concerning Sammy, Moira had taken it for granted that the boy must have left Cleeness, and had decided that it would be wiser not to make inquiries through Miss Wallace how he could be traced, for Oliver did not seem to miss him. In fact he appeared perfectly content and self-sufficient. When they came back to the house he sat bright-eyed and smiling and seemed vaguely constipated with some suppressed and unshared pleasure. He could hardly wait to finish his tea before rushing off to resume his interrupted play, but she could not help but wonder why it was that he so preferred the evenings when the war
mth of the sun had gone and there was very often a chill wind.

  On Sunday night Moira sighed and put the cover on her typewriter. She crushed out her cigarette. There were already half a dozen stubs in the ashtray. It was ten o’clock and the article which she had just finished was abysmal in its banality. It epitomized all the dreary and rehashed triteness that she had read so often and at which she had so readily mocked. Tomorrow she would make herself tear it up and start afresh. She should have thrown it away at once but here and there there had been a phrase or two which had pleased her and which she considered might have some future potential.

  Miss Wallace’s over-furnished sitting-room was stuffy, for one of the by-products of the dislike of girls for domestic service had been the replacement of the open fire which had formerly blazed there by a cheerless, but labor saving, arrangement of electric logs which she had switched on. This was made to appear even more unwelcoming by the background of black tiles with hand painted water-lilies that had surrounded the old grate. Moira lit another cigarette and thought that she would walk to the gate for a breath of fresh air before going up to bed.

  She stood looking out on to the deserted road and wondered how Jeremy was making out while she and Oliver were at Cleeness. On the whole their marriage had been a happy one, but when, for one reason or another, they had to be apart, they were both tacitly relieved, although their subsequent reunions were appreciated by both.

  The night was as warm as June and a full moon hung in a sky of light grey silk, and while Moira lingered by the gate, unwilling to go in, she heard Oliver’s voice speaking cautiously and quietly as if he did not want to be overheard. “All right, Sammy,” he was saying. “I’ll be there, and I’ll bring some sweets and my sailing boats. I’ve got two and they’re super and so there’ll be one each. Same place. Same time.”