Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper

by Donald Henderson

  ‘Tears,’ he said, obscurely. ‘Heck, I’m going to dress!’

  She lay in disarray and blew her nose. The draught from the window touched her skin at many points, and downstairs the gong started up for dinner.

  ‘What an old-fashioned sound,’ she said.

  … It had cleared his brain; and although he didn’t regard it as love, he recognised its physical value: the scales had slipped from the backs of his eyes once again, and for a very little time indeed would remain slipped away.

  Then the little black velvet curtain would steal quietly down again.

  He hired a chauffeur to take him back to town, and he sat in the back thinking about her. In an hour or two he would never think of her again; and quite likely she would never think of him. She said she’d done it before, now and then, how could she help it, with eyes like that? On his knee was a copy of the Kent and Sussex Courier. It was too dark to read now, but he had already glanced through the paragraph which said a verdict of accidental death had been returned at the inquest this afternoon on Delius Nandle, late of The Rookery, Knockholt, which had been burnt to the ground on Sunday night. And it said that Delius Nandle would be heartily missed by his many friends, and most particularly would they miss him at The Drill Hall on Wednesday nights, where he had taken the keenest interest in the whist drives. It said that Knockholt extended the greatest sympathy to the widow, ‘and to Miss Souter whose relations are so well known in connection with the relief of Ladysmith.’ On the advertisement page it said that there were ferrets for sale at Cumber Cottage, apply Mr Dridges personally between two and four any afternoon. It was nice.

  Mr Bowling sat thinking about the immediate future. There was that in his face which was intensely resolute, and that in it which was good-humoured—rather as a man might look who was thinking: ‘You’d still try and fool me, would you?’ and looking knowing about it. ‘We shall now bally well see,’ his genial but determined look said. It was really past being laughable.

  ‘I’m getting a bit browned off,’ he thought once, and lit a cigar.

  The swiftly changing thoughts in his mind all of a sudden pounced on a queer little item.

  ‘By jove!’ he exclaimed, almost aloud. ‘I clean forgot it! And so did she!’

  He had thought of the little parcel marked ‘fragile’ which he had promised to deliver for Mrs Nandle to a friend of hers in Brook Green. He had shoved it down somewhere in the flat and clean forgotten all about it.

  When he came to considering the importance of that little matter, (which he was going to come to very soon indeed), he found it absorbing, being ever of the turn of mind which says, there, if I hadn’t gone to see the So-and-So’s, I’d never have met So-and-So; but for the moment he merely thought: ‘How very remiss of me! I must get on a bus this evening and tootle along with it!’

  In the same way, he was very soon indeed to come to considering the matter of Mr Farthing.

  For the present, had anyone said, Oh, you remember old Farthing, who runs that shop affair at the Heights?—he would not have had the remotest idea who they were talking about.

  And even when the car drew up once again at the Heights, and he saw Mr Farthing interestedly watching him, he could honestly declare: ‘My dear chap, at that moment I never had the slightest idea that he was to be my next victim, I never gave him the slightest thought!’

  And yet, how obvious, it later seemed, that he should murder Mr Farthing.

  The fellow was made for murder.

  ‘By jove, yes,’ he thought then. ‘What an ass I’ve been! I ought to have bumped him off weeks ago …! And in the matter of getting caught there, I could hardly make an error this time! The fellow weighs fifteen stone, and would most certainly quickly be missed?’

  He also thought:

  ‘Another thing: a chap like that would be sure to put up a pretty good struggle. He’s no doubt got lungs like an elephant. It ought to add a bit of sportsmanship and spice. I shouldn’t really care to be accused of not playing cricket!’

  When he entered the flats, a porter dashed up to take his suitcase—it was all so pleasant. He had that homing feeling, liking the action, the colour and the lights; and the sensation only dimmed very slightly when he went into his flat and switched on the lights. He quickly had to switch them off again, for the blackout had to be done. The porter helped him and remarked:

  ‘Mr Clark thought you weren’t coming back, sir. I think he’s letting the flat.’

  He remembered that he had tried to tell the Belgian he was not coming back, and evidently she had tumbled to it.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I shall be here for a day or two. So will you tell Mr Clark?’

  Mr Clark was the manager. The porter went and told Mr Clark, returning with the message that Mr Clark would be pleased to get the matter quite clear.

  ‘Quite clear,’ pondered Mr Bowling aimiably. He mixed a whisky and soda and sat down with it.

  The porter was a young chap and looked like a friendly bulldog.

  ‘Yes, sir, Mr Clark couldn’t make out why you left your things, sir, I think that was it. Rent was paid up ahead too, sir. That’s a very unusual thing here. I don’t think Mr Clark quite understood, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Bowling chirpily.

  The porter said:

  ‘He said he’d take the liberty of calling on you during the late evening, sir, if that would be convenient?’

  ‘It would be quite convenient, old chap. Tell him to pop in any old time. If I’m out, I shan’t be many minutes, just going to pop along to Brook Green. By the way, how do I get there?’

  The porter had long arms which hung down. He said if it was him, he’d walk to Brook Green.

  Then he volunteered the news that he’d had his call up papers, and was going into the Navy.

  ‘Splendid,’ said Mr Bowling.

  ‘Signallers.’

  ‘Excellent! I congratulate you!’

  ‘I passed my medical. They didn’t half mess me about.’

  ‘They messed me about, too!’

  ‘There was nothing they didn’t think of. But you get used to it, don’t you, sir? We were all in the same boat. But I don’t think I should care to be them doctors, would you? Staring all day at that sort of thing?’

  Mr Bowling said it would not appeal to him at all.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘You must have a drink before you go, we must drink to your success in the Navy!’

  The boy shook his head.

  ‘Thanks all the same, sir. I promised mum I’d never touch it, and I’m never going to!’

  ‘Well, you know best. I wish you all the luck in the world.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Well, I’ll tell Mr Clark he can come up.’

  ‘Do.’

  He tipped the boy and he went out looking very pleased. Mr Bowling felt in genial, if slightly lonely, mood, and wandered about trying to find the little parcel which Mrs Nandle had entrusted him with. He found it in his bedroom on the dressing table, just as he had left it. Mrs Nandle’s large handwriting said: ‘Miss Mason, 66 Brook Green, London, W6.’ Brook Green he knew as the rectangular piece of grass and hard tennis courts which lay between Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush, and was hardly ten minutes’ walk from the Heights, if you knew that part of London. He would go along there presently, after he had had something to eat somewhere. There was a French restaurant in Notting Hill Gate, and he thought he would eat there. But it was a little late, in these war days, and the place might be shut. It was half-past eight. He sat down at the piano and played some Chopin for a little while, and was just thinking of knocking off when the door bell rang. He wandered whistling to the door and was not a little surprised to find Mr Farthing standing there.

  He stopped whistling. What on earth did this fellow want?

  ‘Good evening?’ he said civilly.

  CHAPTER XVII

  MR FARTHING thought it a bright idea of his, to start the Paper Salvage campaign. He tackled anybody who was in on
Mr Bowling’s floor, succeeding in getting promises from old Cooker, retired Indian civil servant, who had a one-room flat next to Bowling, and from the Misses Phelps, two sisters who were opposite. He made every effort to be charming, an effort which did not change his appearance particularly, but which slightly removed some of his permanent scowl.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he told the Phelps, peering in at their flat to see if there was anything of interest. He often wondered whether the Misses Phelps went in for slap and tickle, they weren’t old, and the airs they gave themselves might easily have been camouflage. Mr Farthing had never forgotten the time he had undertaken to mend a window catch for a lady who, as he put it, was actually titled, though she went about incognito, and who had had a very tasty flat on the top floor. He went in to mend this window catch, and had had a very nice chat with madam, and then turned round suddenly to find she was on the sofa, ‘stark naked, it’s as true as I’m standing here,’ he told many a man in the club. ‘I leave the rest to you!’ He had felt very proud. Since then, he always rang flat bells with a certain sense of anticipation. The Misses Phelps, however, had no time for him whatever, though they were glad to agree to put out any spare paper in a separate heap in the passage every morning. ‘Thank you very much,’ Mr Farthing said, and the door shut rather firmly in his face. ‘Bleeding Capitalists,’ he decided, and went along to old Cooker’s door and pressed the buzzer.

  Old Cooker came to the door. He was delighted to see anyone, even Farthing, for he was one of the loneliest men in London. London was so unfriendly. He had called on his new neighbour a number of times, a Mr Bowling he gathered from the porter, but either he was always out, or he didn’t bother to answer the bell, which was what so many people did. It was a pity, because he could hear him playing the piano, and Mr Cooker was known in Punjhab as being ‘musical. His aunt once met Dame Melba, you know.’

  Mr Cooker’s one-room flat was in an unholy mess, Mr Farthing staring disgustedly at saucepans and plates and cups, unwashed, on ends of chairs, and on bookcases, and on Cooker’s photograph album. Cooker’s photograph album was one of the most frightening things in the Heights. He at one time used to bring it down to the club, and it was the direct cause of him being the only Life Member to be expelled (under Rule 62b, see Club Rules) which clearly and painfully indicated that, ‘Whereas, and as whereunder, the member aforementioned, having been proved to the satisfaction of the Committee, and at least three independent witnesses, to have been a nuisance to other members on more than two occasions, could be peremptorily expelled from the aforementioned club, by letter.’ There had been an endless stream of eager witnesses, who had spent days ringing up the Secretary and enquiring brutally, ‘Look here, what are we going to do about Cooker, he’s pestering people with that bloody album again?’ And whereas the offence had been committed on positive divers occasions, let alone two or three, a very sharp letter was written, and taken out, and publicly posted in the letter box outside, just in case delivery by hand made for an infringement of the law, and gave the old boy a loophole, which he certainly searched for with all speed and avidity. Failing to find one, however, Mr Cooker told the Secretary, ‘straight from the shoulder,’ that the country was going to the dogs, and small wonder, with the types that got about nowadays! He took his album upstairs to his flat and vowed never to join a club again. Seeing the album Mr Farthing thought he had made a marvellous coup for his Salvage Campaign, but didn’t mention it, in case Cooker lured him in and started going: ‘Yes, I knew you’d be interested in that—and this is a tiger I bagged in ’05, see that tree? Well, a little to the right of it is me!’ And: ‘Now, this was taken by my dear wife, it’s on the Governor General’s estate! Stop me if I’ve told you this before, I don’t think I have, but they say I repeat myself? Well, this particular bag …’ As it was, Mr Cooker was standing holding a frying pan, and wearing a little red cap with a tassel. He asked Mr Farthing in, notwithstanding his connections with the club, for the quarrel had been just before Mr Farthing had taken over the job. Firmly refusing, Mr Farthing said, no, no thank you, he didn’t intend to interrupt Mr Cooker’s meal—it seemed difficult to call it ‘dinner,’ seeing that it was so spread out, in Eastern fashion, as it were, Sultan Cooker, preparing to squat on the floor and eat from there, there was a pie on the tuffet, and some brown bread and butter on the floor itself, near the radiator. ‘I’m dining alone,’ said Mr Cooker, ‘and you are most welcome to share my humble repast? I have dined with kings and commoners, but I am never so happy as when entertaining in my own home.’

  ‘Capitalists?’ queried Mr Farthing, not quite catching the word commoner, and wondering what Mr Cooker meant by kings and Capitalists, which were so deplorably one and the same thing. ‘Don’t talk to me about Capitalists! No, sir! No, what I’ve just popped in about, is not to interrupt your, er … food. It’s just about waste paper, Mr Cooker. I shall be very glad to collect any you put out each day. It’s for the war effort, you know.’

  ‘I shall be delighted,’ said Mr Cooker, and at once put down his frying pan and started collecting newspapers.

  ‘I didn’t mean now,’ Mr Farthing said, backing away carefully. ‘I just thought I’d start asking folks.’

  ‘My dear sir, it’s a perfectly splendid and most patriotic idea and …’

  ‘It’s not that I’m helping win the war for Capitalism, please don’t think that? I just don’t like the idea of being in chains.’

  ‘Chains?’

  ‘The only mercy likely to be shown if the hordes get here, will be mercy to fair headed Scotsmen. Well, I don’t happen to be a Scot!’ Mr Farthing had got it all worked out. ‘I shall jump off the building, I think. Might just as well.’

  Mr Cooker expressed astonishment at his attitude, and grew rather fiery, going, ‘But, my dear sir,’ in scandalised tones, his tassel bobbing about over his scarlet forehead.

  ‘Well,’ explained Mr Farthing, tapping his sloping forehead, ‘you want it up here, don’t you? That’s where you want it, Mr Cooker!’

  ‘Up there?’ stared the other’s piggy eyes. ‘But, my dear sir …!’

  ‘Oh, I know what they all say here about me,’ Mr Farthing said darkly. ‘Why aren’t I in the Army? Or the Air Force! Or the Navy! Or the Civil Defence! And why aren’t I a conchie?’ He sucked his teeth. ‘They’d like to know how I got reserved, I daresay! Yes, I daresay they would!’

  Mr Cooker’s mind chased after him. He was not very quick, and Mr Farthing kept dodging from one thing to the next, it was impossible to keep pace. Now he was talking about Mr Bowling.

  Or was he talking about Capitalism again?

  ‘I’m going to see him now,’ Mr Farthing was now saying.

  ‘Who?’ mouthed Mr Cooker, like an old dog catching up with the scent. ‘Oh you mean my neighbour, Mr …’

  ‘There’s quite a lot of people in civvies in this country! Quite a lot! And I daresay some of them would not bear too close an enquiry, if one faced up to it, what-say?’

  ‘What-say,’ repeated Mr Cooker, groping. ‘What …?’

  ‘So I’ll be getting along, Mr Cooker. Sorry to have troubled you?’

  ‘What? Trouble? Not at all, won’t …?’

  ‘Another time, thank you very much, I’ve had my dinner, in any case. Goodnight, sir!’

  Mr Farthing walked firmly away.

  Mr Cooker stared after him, returned muttering and closed his door.

  Mr Farthing walked quietly along the blue matted carpet and stopped in front of Mr Bowling’s door. He listened for a moment. Mr Bowling was playing the piano.

  He put a square thumb on the buzzer and pressed. It went: Bzzzzzzzzz.

  The music stopped and an inner door opened. The sound of Mr Bowling whistling Hot Sock Roleson grew nearer and nearer.

  The door opened.

  … The relative, and relevant, verbal and factual details, immediately leading to the moment when, with back bent like a broad and tightly padded arc of steel, Mr Bowling judged
it time to place a huge and iron hand hard down on the back of Mr Farthing’s neck, thereby inducing in him, perhaps for the first time in his life, an attitude of prayer, are not of vital interest, unless of time-passing, purely: for it might be said of another—well, it doesn’t matter what he said, the point is he found himself on the live rail, and the sparks started to fly. For Mr Bowling knew, by then—and, indeed, he knew it when Mr Farthing stood there in the doorway—that for Mr Farthing the plum was ready to drop. He smacked his hand down hard, shoving that immense head well down between the knees, then quickly inserting the other hand in the hollow made, and warmly covering Mr Farthing’s nose and mouth. Mr Farthing let out a nasal squeal which was stillborn, and gave an astonished plunge forward, his arms like buttresses. Amused, and reddening under the strain, Mr Bowling exerted his strength, tightly gripping the mouth and nose still, and keeping the head well down, and he allowed play and backed under pressure to the brown curtains. He puffed good-naturedly and thought: ‘Now, this is not because you told me the name of a woman here you’d had relations with, and it is not because I think that sort of thing particularly caddish.

  ‘And nor is it because I happen to want an excuse to kill someone. It’s—well, just because you came here, and Destiny brought you saying: Your Time is Now and There—go in!’

  Mr Farthing on the other hand, was thinking along a totally different plane: it was not that he wanted to come in and talk to this fellow Bowling, whom he despised utterly for what he appeared to be, and doubtless was, to wit, a snob, and a filthy Capitalist, and quite probably a Fifth Columnist, and above all a person contemptuous of persons like himself. True, it was not considered very nice to say you had raped a woman, if you were also going to say that woman’s name. Admitted, that was a slip, but Mr Bowling had put on such superior airs, that bloody accent of his, and his nonchalant and contemptuous manner, and had had the unmerited cheek to say he, Farthing, was a Capitalist. What had led up to that? Why, seeing the airs Bowling was giving himself, he’d mentioned a bank account, not to be out-done, and Bowling had sneered: ‘Ha—bally Capitalist, what? Eh, Farthing?’ It had been a shock. Me a Capitalist! Gracious! And what had led up to that? Why, chatter about people. He’d tried to be genial to Bowling, had managed to gain entry, reluctant though the invitation sounded, had accepted a drop of gin, had finished with paper salvage, and had started on ‘people’. Mr Farthing had said he didn’t think Mr Bowling was a very sociable kind. ‘Perhaps you don’t like people,’ he commented, trying to be nice-sounding, but eyes all the time working on behalf of the British Government. The man seemed to have plenty of money, he’d got comforts of every kind, even a bottle of Bols. There were no photographs, which was interesting, and rather curious, surely, was he married or engaged or anything? Did he keep a woman? Or what did he do in that line? The conversation became, at Mr Farthing’s instigation, though he had not intended it, the kind of interview in which the visitor says one thing, and the host goes one better; and then the visitor senses a hostility and goes one better still. At last, frozen smiles fade altogether, and remarks become more open, rather hackneyed, because the one is thinking: ‘What shall I ask Mr Bowling next, shall I ask him point blank what he’s doing here at the Heights?’ and the other is thinking: ‘This fellow is getting very inquisitive? Why exactly has he come here? It was surely a little rash of him?’ When Mr Bowling got up and said: ‘I don’t think that’s any of your affair, Farthing,’ not even saying ‘Mr’ Farthing now, to a perfectly careful question about where he had lived before he came to the Heights, Mr Farthing’s aggressive chin threw out a distinct challenge. But he wasn’t quite ready for open warfare for a minute or two, and he sideskirted on to the ever-ready topic of woman, and found himself in startlingly deep water. He had once insulted his mother, as a youth, and he had done it thoughtlessly, and the same atmospherical sense of pending calamity was felt then, as now; he too had sown the wind, and had reaped the whirlwind: mother had crowned him with an iron stewpot and knocked him senseless for several minutes.