Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper

by Donald Henderson

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ Fairy Nandle mumured for the fortieth time. ‘I just can’t believe it. And when we returned home and saw the flames …!’

  ‘We thought it was an enemy bomber which had been brought down, Mr Bowling. We thought it had fallen in flames in front of The Rookery. But when we got closer, it was The Rookery! And of course the Fire Brigade had to come such a long way.’

  ‘They were very good,’ Mrs Nandle said.

  ‘But they could do nothing, Mr Bowling,’ Niggs Souter said. ‘You must come and see for yourself. Or couldn’t you bear to? What do you think, Fairy, dear?’

  ‘No! I never want to go there again! Never!’

  ‘You must try not to give way. You still have me. Hasn’t she, Mr Bowling? … What we cannot understand is how the fire started. Can we, dear? We think poor Delius must have fallen asleep,’ she told the Coroner later in the week. She was really spokesman for Mrs Nandle, who was too overcome to be very much use in the witness box. The Coroner was such a pleasant, well-bred gentleman, they had often seen him at hunts. ‘We think he must have fallen asleep,’ Niggs said, ‘and a spark from the fire lit the rug, the rug Mrs Nandle brought back a few years before when we all went to Egypt. The Pyramids …’

  ‘Surely,’ wondered the Coroner, leaning down in a kindly fashion, and ignoring the Pyramids for the time being, ‘had such a thing happened, Miss Souter, one would imagine the deceased waking up almost immediately?’

  ‘The only other theory we can think of,’ Niggs thereupon said, ‘was the new lamp in the scullery. It was a lamp and heater combined, and only a day or two before, Mrs Nandle had had to complain … had had to ask her dear husband if he would try and remember to close the front of it, it had a sliding gate.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘But we think he may have forgotten to do this, and …’

  ‘Was he a forgetful man?’ the Coroner rather wondered.

  ‘I fear so,’ said Miss Souter sadly and gravely. ‘I don’t want to say a single word against such a sweet, good …’

  ‘Quite so, quite so! I appreciate that, Miss—er—Souter! But I still …’

  ‘We think that something may have fallen on to this lamp, and thus the fire may have started.’

  ‘What kind of something?’

  ‘A dish cloth. Or …’

  ‘Quite so,’ frowned the Coroner, still quite puzzled, ‘but surely, supposing such a thing had happened, and a fire started in the scullery, it would seem unlikely that the deceased would not be awakened? Granted that The Rookery was largely made of very old timber, it seems puzzling to me when I learn that his, er, his, er … that he was found on the floor of what had been the lounge, roughly at the foot of what had been the stairs?’

  Miss Souter regretted that they had no other theories to offer, and she put a handkerchief to her eyes.

  ‘Was he a man to sleep heavily, would you say?’ the Coroner asked.

  ‘Very. He would drop off on the sofa sometimes of an afternoon, and both Mrs Nandle and I would have to comp—would have to give him a jog.’

  ‘It was difficult to rouse him?’

  ‘Very.’

  ‘A pity the dog was out in the kennel,’ remarked the Coroner. ‘Or he would have aroused him.’

  ‘Pots would arouse anything,’ Miss Souter said, adding, with slightly questionable enthusiasm, ‘How thankful we are that dear Pots was saved, anyhow. We’ve got him at the hotel. They love him there.’

  It seemed a rather puzzling case, but the Coroner was very used to the strange ways of men and women. He could not imagine himself snoring through a fire which had to approach from out in the scullery, and with a dog barking its head off outside in a shed; but evidently Mr Nandle had, and had become surrounded by smoke and flame, and been suffocated by fumes before he really started to get out of a sound sleep. The even odder part of it was that the evidence of the guest, Mr Bowling, who, most oddly, had been to the same public school as himself, did not clearly indicate any intentions of the deceased to have a sleep. Yes, he remembered Bowling quite well, though Bowling had been a boarder, and he had been what was disrespectfully called a Day Bug. It was quaint the way one remet people in after life. Shades of the old school, what? Mr Bowling hadn’t changed at all, the same old turnip head, which he had occasionally been called, though nicknames had never stuck to him, he wasn’t the popular kind. He rather liked him now, and considered him an excellent witness. Rather aloof, though, and seemingly a trifle superior, as if out of humour with life. Was he a cynic? If one remembered, he had seemed rather the idealist, as a boy? Mr Bowling’s attitude rather hinted that he didn’t think much of Coroners and courts. Perhaps he was just anxious to get back to town. Perhaps it was plain shyness, the ordeal of going into a witness box affected all sorts of people differently, even sophisticated people. It was often quaint.

  ‘So then you said you would go and get the car, I suppose, Mr Bowling, and go back to town,’ he suggested.

  ‘No. I didn’t say anything,’ Mr Bowling said, in his cold manner.

  ‘But the ladies went off to church. And so I suppose you indicated your intentions?’

  ‘I certainly did that,’ Mr Bowling said rather drily.

  ‘How did he take it? What I mean is …’

  ‘He took it very well.’

  ‘What I mean to say is, was there anything in his manner to indicate that he had decided, after your departure, that he would take a nap?’

  Mr Bowling pondered this.

  ‘A nap,’ he pondered.

  ‘Yes,’ the Coroner waited.

  The court waited.

  Mr Bowling thought, cynically: ‘Well, obviously I’ve lost the rubber, so it doesn’t matter what I say.’

  So he smiled very faintly and said:

  ‘He was lying down when I left. Like a dead’un.’

  Seeing the Coroner’s rather shocked expression, Mr Bowling realised that he had committed a breach of good manners.

  He apologised.

  ‘I apologise! I was not being disrespectful.’

  ‘What you meant to say,’ said the Coroner, ‘was that he was actually in a recumbent position when you left him?’

  ‘Oh, decidedly.’

  ‘Oh, I see, well, it does seem that he was feeling tired, then, and was in fact going to have a sleep? But he didn’t actually say he was going to?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Say?’

  ‘I expect he made a remark of some kind, relative to …?’

  ‘He said what about a game of draughts. I remember that.’

  ‘Draughts?’ said the Coroner, startled. ‘Oh—so then he was not actually going to sleep, if …’

  ‘I declined to play draughts.’

  ‘Oh, I see! Was he on the sofa, Mr Bowling? Or …?’

  ‘When I left him he was on the floor.’

  ‘On the floor?’

  ‘Well, on the rug there.’

  ‘But the rug was on the floor, of course …’

  ‘Oh, yes! Rather!’

  This was another very puzzling feature. The Coroner wondered if he ought not to recall Mrs Nandle, in order to find out if it had been the habit of the deceased to lie on the floor. But it seemed rather absurd to add to her distress by such a triviality. After all, he often lay on the floor himself, though usually he went nearer to the fire. Doubtless Mr Bowling meant he had curled up by the fire and was going to read, or something of the kind.

  ‘He was certainly curled up, when I left him,’ Mr Bowling told the court.

  Back in the hotel for a final cup of tea with the two ladies, Mr Bowling seemed as dispirited as ever. But the two ladies thought him perfectly charming, he had ordered the loveliest wreath for poor Delius, and was going to stay over until tomorrow, for the funeral. The two ladies had been just a little shocked about his remark in the witness box, referring to Delius as a ‘dead’un’; but, as Niggs said, he was clearly suffering from nervousness, it had
been such an ordeal, and so painful for everyone. On all other occasions, Mr Bowling’s manners had been flawless.

  ‘We shall not be likely to forget you,’ Niggs said to him at tea.

  ‘No, indeed,’ agreed Mrs Nandle.

  ‘It’s very charming of you to say so,’ Mr Bowling said courteously. ‘But I’m far from sure that I deserve it!’

  ‘You do deserve it,’ Niggs said. ‘And we do so hope you won’t let it get you down. We have all got to go some day, I don’t expect you have ever looked at it that way,’ she smiled sadly. ‘But you must try and see the bright side!’

  CHAPTER XVI

  THE two ladies talked for a little, in droning voices, rather like two bees who were quite unable to leave the vicinity of, say, a marrow bed; it was beginning to smell a bit, but there was still an unusual sweetness which lingered; the item of poor Delius being so utterly charred, unrecognisable except for his wristwatch, which had had a steel clasp, Fairy had given it to him for his recent birthday; and the item of not being able to find Mr Bowling, ‘so stupid of us, but your letter got burnt,’ Mrs Nandle explained, ‘and Niggs quite thought the flats were called Madison Flights, or Madison Flats, and she said it was in W6. That was why you didn’t get the letter.’ Then Mrs Nandle suddenly stopped and stared. Mr Bowling had said he had not had the letter, how, then, had Mr Thwaite found him? Truly the police were wonderful. Perhaps the wireless had sent out a police message. Well, it was all over now. Except for the funeral.

  ‘We shall see you at the funeral,’ Mrs Nandle shook hands with Mr Bowling. She gave a sad little smile.

  ‘Yes,’ he bowed.

  ‘Cheerio,’ said Miss Souter, in the modern manner she adopted at times. ‘We shall see you?’

  He bowed and smiled sadly.

  ‘Yes.’

  But he didn’t see them again.

  He went upstairs.

  Going to his room, he felt a sense of despondency and gloom, and although he recognised his moods, now, he thought the present one was at any rate in part caused by the darkness of the hotel. It was low-ceilinged, and the rooms and passages were black-beamed and narrow, there wasn’t nearly enough light. He suddenly decided that he could not stick it any longer, and that he was very much afraid he would not wait for the funeral after all. ‘I’ll write a polite note to the poor old dears,’ he decided, ‘and say I’ll not be able to stay after all, I have to get back to jolly old London.’ He stood in his dark bedroom, evening shadows starting to fall. The door he had left open was creaking a little as it rode to and fro, in a strong draught. Somebody was moving about in the room bang opposite, and a girl’s voice was humming briskly an old song something about ‘Hot Sock Roleson, On the river bank, and a bowl of steaming suet’, and he wished she’d get the words right, he was quite sure they weren’t that. He sat at a writing table, staring at paper and pens, aware that it was almost too much effort to pick up a pen and put:

  ‘My dear Mrs Nandle,

  I find that it is necessary for me to get back to London at once, and I do hope you won’t think it unkind of me not to attend the funeral tomorrow. My thoughts will be with you both the whole of the day. This is a very sad world, and it never seems to work out according to plan, now it is full of deepest sorrow, now it is quite ludicrously gay. I can only hope your sorrow will grow into a happy memory, and will become fragrant as rosemary on a summer evening. Love is the great thing, is it not, and you are a thousand times blessed to have experienced it at all. I know Delius would share these thoughts with me. My kindest thoughts to Miss Souter. I am more than happy to think you can never be alone while she is with us—which I pray will be for many a long day yet.’

  His thoughts broke for a bit, on account of the rather sacrilegious thought that Delius had been such a complete twerp, and on account of the thought that dear Niggs couldn’t possibly live much longer, she must surely be deep in her sixties. So he finished abruptly: ‘With kindest regards, Yours sincerely, W. Bowling.’ The sound of Hot Sock Roleson grew a little nearer, and stopped just over his shoulder. He started and looked round.

  She was the slimmest and loveliest woman he had ever set eyes on, and when he looked into her eyes he thought of milk. She wasn’t an adolescent, but he thought of adolescence, and couldn’t take his eyes off her. Her hair hung down in a flat, sophisticated, netted fashion, and she had green ear-rings. The only other thing he noticed about her was the smell of her. He had had the same feminine sensation in his nostrils during the blitz, when a bomb blew up a scented soap factory. Standing in the dark there, and getting the scent of it, it lingered. She wanted something or other, he didn’t even hear what it was. She was polite but perky and she knew all about her beauty and what her eyes did to men in buses and undergrounds and cafés and dance halls and ballrooms and stately homes of England. He became aware that he was trying to delude himself that it had happened at last, and already his lips framed the word: ‘Angel?’ He prayed passionately: ‘If only she refuses me—then it’s Angel,’ even though he knew that she had touched his life too late; he was not merely a wash-out now: everyone must consider him evil, even if he didn’t consider it himself?

  But even as the seconds ticked over, and now he wanted it to be Angel, and now he didn’t, and even as they stood there in the tumbling shadows, he knew she was just another woman, with just another story, which worried her secretly. Illusion fell away, like fantasy which has been ruined by somebody chucking a brick into the window of a pantomime and letting forth cockney oaths at the princess in her golden coach.

  He went for her, because he wanted her, and because he thought there was a chance she might raise a shindy about it.

  But she didn’t.

  Neither of them even thought of shutting the door, until after.

  He shut it and went back and lay on the bed beside her. Her hair had got loose, it was white as silk, like a faded buttercup. She was rather like a buttercup herself.

  She had a matter-of-fact voice.

  ‘I’m sorry about it,’ she said, meaning something private concerning them.

  ‘It’s all right, my dear,’ he told her pleasantly.

  ‘You are a nuisance!’

  ‘The sensation’s mutual!’ He gave a little laugh.

  She lay flat and said:

  ‘I’ve lied to you. I said I wasn’t married. I am.’

  He didn’t say anything for a moment. Then he said:

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I would not have …’

  ‘Men always pretend that,’ she interrupted sharply.

  ‘I think I mean it. I’m dead against adultery. Honestly. I don’t say I’ve never committed adultery, I have. But I was young and I was learning.’

  ‘Did it need many lessons?’ she asked.

  ‘No,’ he said seriously.

  She said:

  ‘My husband and I love each other. I know that. But we don’t get on. I can’t tell you why, it’s too intimate. I was very young indeed when we married, I was at school … He’s gone back East, and it’s best for him, he gets what he wants out there, and needn’t bother me. I’m in the Hell of a mess,’ she said.

  ‘Yes, you are. What’s your name?’

  ‘My christian name is Heather. It doesn’t matter about the rest.’

  ‘We shan’t meet again, anyway. Except by a fluke.’

  ‘No, I know.’

  ‘What are you doing here, Heather?’

  ‘I wish I knew. He went yesterday, and I had a nausea against London, got out the car and hared down here. I’ve no plans whatever.’

  ‘You’d better make some.’

  ‘Oh, I will! I’m having a think. I’m thinking of divorce, all sorts of things. I can go home, I suppose. What are your plans?’

  He thought and then said slowly:

  ‘I think I’m going to have just one more shot at achieving a certain something I’ve been trying bally hard to achieve for some little time.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘It’s to
o intimate to tell you. Or, rather, you’d never believe me if I did tell you.’

  ‘I would …’

  ‘No! You wouldn’t! There’s only one person in the world who would understand.’

  ‘Who?’ she turned on her side and said. She was interested in him.

  ‘I call her Angel,’ he said shyly.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said. ‘Where does she hang out?’

  He turned to her and smiled sorrowfully.

  ‘I’m blessed if I know,’ he sighed. He laughed again. ‘I haven’t met her yet.’

  She turned over on her back again.

  ‘You’re kidding,’ she said, disappointed. ‘I thought you were serious.’

  Yet, goodness knew, he looked serious enough.

  Presently, she lay looking up at him. His eyes were steel grey, and extremely strong. They shone strength. Humour tinged the creases round his eyes and mouth. His mouth wasn’t strong, but it was very fine and she liked it. As in all the men she saw, one side of his face expressed hidden good, and the other side hidden evil. If a human being was a silent battle between the two, she would have judged that the good side was leading by inches. When he loved her, he seemed to be pleading, as well as fighting, and he seemed to want to draw out of her a spiritual something which she was fully aware was not in her power to give, it was comprised of heart and brain and soul, whereas she knew only too well that she was principally body. Well, at any rate she could give him that—which she did, until she cried.

  He was panting.

  ‘Don’t cry, for God’s sake,’ he pleaded.

  But she cried.

  ‘I’m sorry!’