The Other Passenger

by John Keir Cross

  There was a silence. Miriam was searching for something to say. He could see that she didn’t understand his mood but was aware that any of the usual social gambits would be out of place. So she was helpless and embarrassed.

  “I expect you won’t see me next year,” said Neville suddenly.

  “Why not?”

  “Hamden will have me booted out. We had a colossal row to-day. I thought he was going to strike me.”

  “Oh . . . Oh . . .”

  That was all she could say. She had seated herself gingerly on the edge of a sofa.

  “Well, what the hell does it matter?” he went on bitterly. “I don’t care. There’s bound to be a war in any case soon. There’ll be air raids. We’ll all be blown to bits.”

  “But where could you go? I mean—what would you do?”

  “Do? Oh there’s a world outside Cruach. There’s always something to do. I don’t know . . .”

  There was silence again. Then she ventured tentatively:

  “Why don’t you get on with Mr. Hamden? I mean—oh, I know he’s difficult and all that, but if one sinks one’s own personality——”

  “Hamden isn’t the half of it. He’s only a sort of—a sort of crystallization. He gives all the unresolved bits of me some sort of ‘local habitation and a name.’ What I’m fighting against isn’t Hamden—it isn’t even Cruach. It’s—oh, well. Forget it all.”

  “Fighting . . . I don’t know what you mean by ‘fighting,’ ” she said timidly.

  “Neither do I,” he said with a sudden snigger. He got up to his feet and began to walk restlessly about the room. She was still sitting on the edge of the sofa, following him about with her wide startled eyes.

  “What’s this?” he said abruptly, stopping for a moment before the piano and fingering over the first theme of the sonata. “Haydn . . . Tum-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-tum . . . Why do you go to the Grants’?” he asked suddenly, turning to her.

  “I——” she was nervous, his sudden jump from subject to subject was ununderstandable to her. “I——just go. Mrs. Grant—asks me.”

  “That cow! Oh well. I shouldn’t have thought you’d have anything to say to each other.”

  “Well—school. She’s all right.”

  He had stopped in front of her and was staring down at her. Suddenly he said, inconsequentially:

  “You have lovely hands, Miriam. Soft and white and beautiful. Lovely hands.”

  He could read the fear in her big eyes.

  “Miriam——” he began. But he didn’t know any longer what it was that he wanted to say. He was inarticulate, his mind was blank—except that he knew of something that was there, struggling desperately in the background to make itself clear.

  “No it doesn’t matter. I’ve forgotten. I’m sorry I’m like this. I’ll have to go.”

  “But what’s the matter? I mean—can’t I help you?”

  “No. I don’t know. I haven’t felt like this before—not as strongly. There’s something wrong. Maybe it’s only because I need a rest—I’ve been working too hard over these wretched tests and exams. I wish——” He hesitated.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Nothing. I’m going. I’m sorry if I’ve disturbed you.”

  He went to the door. But something stopped him. Whatever it was that was tormenting him, he seemed to have been goaded to the limit of his endurance. He felt as if his chest were bursting, and his eyes were hot so that he could hardly see. Then he was aware—in a strange, impersonal way—that he was kneeling on the floor with his head in Miriam’s lap, sobbing uncontrollably.

  She did not know what to do. She kept on saying: “John—John—what is it, John? . . .”

  His sobbing spent itself and he was still. In the silence he could hear the ticking of the cheap clock on the mantelshelf. Her lap was warm. He could feel a slight trembling in her legs.

  “O God,” he said suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

  She did not say anything. She seemed very small and curled up inside herself—on the defensive, he found himself thinking, always on the defensive. It was no good, something had gone wrong. No sort of relationship between them was possible. He was ashamed of his sudden lack of control. He did not want to say anything more to her. He felt himself alone. Explanation—even to himself—was impossible.

  “Good-night,” he said abruptly. He went to the door and walked, a little unsteadily, down the garden path.

  And now he gave up finally any attempt to understand himself—to understand anything. He felt like an automaton. He had some vague sense of being directed and controlled—he knew in a queer way where he was going and what he was doing. And resistance—even if he wanted to resist—seemed foolish.

  9

  He walked through the dusk slowly but with determination. Without having to think he took the right turnings. In ten minutes he had reached his destination—a small house standing alone at the end of the road leading up to the school.

  He rang the bell and waited. There was silence, then a fumbling sound as a door-chain was unhooked, and he was facing Hamden—Hamden grotesquely clad in a short dressing-gown of stiff silk, blinking in the dusk at his unexpected visitor.

  “Neville,” said the senior master at last. “Come in. This is unexpected. I couldn’t recognize you.”

  Without a word Neville followed the older man inside. He heard the rustle of the silk dressing-gown and the shuffle of Hamden’s slippered feet. Then he was in a study, lit dimly by a big standard lamp—a statuette of a buxom Eastern girl holding up a torch.

  “Sit down, sit down,” said Hamden. “ ’Pon my soul I don’t often have a visitor. Sit down.” He fussed around for a moment or two, pushing things nervously about with his great hands. They seemed more than ever grotesque as they protruded from the sleeves of the dressing-gown.

  “He thinks I’ve come to apologise,” thought Neville. “He’s getting ready to crow. Well, let him, let him.” Aloud he said: “No thanks. I won’t sit down. I wanted to see you for a moment.”

  “Have a cigarette,” said Hamden. He leaned over the desk for the box. His lanky grey hair hung in its curious hook over his collar.

  Neville held the cigarette to the match that Hamden offered. Then he looked round the room. It was comfortable in a heavy, Pre-Raphaelite way. There were numerous books, some chairs of mellow leather studded with brass nails, a few pictures, a rack with pipes of various sizes and ages. The desk itself was solid and expensive, well polished, though covered with innumerable small ink-stains. It was littered with books and papers. There was one heavy glass paperweight and a big, decorative paper-knife of brass. The blade was long and slender and reflected the light from the houri’s torch in a dull bar against the gloss of the desk.

  “Well, now,” said Hamden, with a thin conventional smile, “what can I do for you, eh?”

  Neville made no answer. He looked straight into Hamden’s pale strained eyes. He felt nothing at all. But still he knew what he would do.

  The silence grew uncomfortable for Hamden. He coughed, his nostrils twitched. With his knobbled fingers he took the cigarette clumsily from his lips and turned to the desk to look for an ash-tray.

  Quickly Neville leaned forward and picked up the paper-knife. With a surge of all his strength he drove it into Hamden’s back. And there was an extraordinary rush of feeling, an enormous blinding sensation.

  “Finished, finished! Oh Christ, finished!”

  Hamden was still standing, with the knife protruding from his back. Then he gave a strangled, high-pitched groan and slid along the desk, sweeping some papers and books to the ground. He lay in a warped, incredible attitude for a moment or two, then toppled to the floor, his long thin fingers twitching like the legs of a dead frog.

  Neville stared at him for a long time as he lay there in painful immobility. Then his lips curled back from his teeth in a terrible dry snarl. He knelt down. He grasped the handle of the knife and levered it with a slow and beastly deliberation from the wound. T
he same unconscious force that had motivated him ever since he had left Miriam Tainsh caused him now to hear, without emotion, the soft, sucking, squelching sound the knife made as it left the wound.

  He leaned back on his haunches, gasping a little—the knife had been buried deep, it had clung powerfully to the flesh, as if held by hands inside. He looked at the blade, glinting red beneath the houri’s lamp. Not sharp—but sharp enough. He had strength—the thing inside him had strength.

  And now his eye travelled to the oozing wound in Hamden’s back: and, from the wound, over the black stiff silk of the dressing-­robe to the hands stretched out on the hearthrug. They had stopped twitching—lay open, grasping: vile white things with the blue veins standing out in relief, the short hairs on the fingers black and stiff against the skin.

  Little bestial grunts came from him. He went forward on his knees. He hacked, he stabbed, he sawed with dreadful strength. The small red veins stood out on the whites of his staring eyes. He sobbed. He sweated terribly. The muscles of his thighs ached. The hearthrug was a charnel.

  But the thing inside him was singing.

  10

  “Good Lord!—Neville! What’s the matter, man? You’re ill—you look ghastly.”

  Neville pushed past Grant into the hall and thence into the florid living room. Mrs. Grant was standing by the fireplace, dressed in a huge loose dressing-gown. Her saggy shape was outlined through the thin cloth. Her mouth was open. She stared at Neville stupidly.

  “Let me get you a drink, old man,” said Grant. “You look all-in. Whisky and soda. Where are the glasses, Florence?”

  Neville raised his hand.

  “I don’t want a drink,” he articulated, in an unrecognizable arid whisper. “Listen, Grant—listen. I want you to know. I’ve murdered Hamden. He’s dead. I’ve murdered him.”

  He looked at Grant’s wide, foolish face—then beyond him to Mrs. Grant. She was standing in the same position, her podgy hands clasped over her stomach. His eyes seemed to focus on her whole huge, bulging and repulsive figure. He began to laugh uncontrollably. He sobbed with laughter. She stared at him in horror.

  And the horror increased—she raised her hands to her flabby mouth as she saw him take from his pocket a thing she at first imperfectly recognized. Screaming now he waved it toward her. He held it in one hand and, with the trembling fingers of the other, felt at the bloody stump of it. He found what he wanted—the slimy end of the long tendon. Foam edged his lips as he held the beastly thing out at her and jerked the gristly cord. The mottled, clayey fingers of the hand grasped hideously at the air—like the claw of a chicken when the tendon is pulled.

  Mrs. Grant dropped her hands from her mouth. She started to retch, trying to vomit. And to Neville it was funnier than ever. He dropped the hand and sank to a chair. He kept on staring at Mrs. Grant. She filled his universe: Rosemary, Miriam, the ranks of the children—all were lost in the great mountain of her pinky-white bulging flesh. And it was incredibly, fantastically funny. He went on laughing. Grant was pummelling him in an effort to stop his hysteria. But he went on laughing.

  11

  A letter from Herbert Campion to George Grant:

  “Ramornie,”

  Eton Bridge,

  Chadford,

  Derbyshire.

  My dear Mr. Grant,

  I cannot tell you how shocked I was to get your letter about poor John Neville. It is impossible to believe that it could have happened. It is as well that he knows nothing of it now—they will give him the best of everything in the asylum, I know, and do nothing to bring any memory of the terrible thing into his mind.

  I cannot deny that he has always been strange. In his recent letters to me I had the impression of something going on in him, something quite nebulous that was a worry and a goad. But even before these letters there was an unaccountable streak. In our days together at University I was constantly encountering a black wall of terrible morbidity—as if malevolent forces over which he had no control were at work inside. Perhaps it was because of his tragic upbringing. It was a woeful story—did he ever tell it to you? He was born just after the outbreak of the 1914 war. His father was an officer in the army and John’s mother, with the child, followed him to whichever town he was stationed in. At the time when he was sent overseas they were living at Sheerness. Two nights after the departure of the father (and on the eve of their own return to her people in Scotland) there was a German air raid on the town. John and his mother were lodging in a small, flimsily built house—sleeping on a mattress in the basement. A bomb fell on them and the house collapsed. John’s mother had rolled over on top of him when she heard the whistle. He was completely unhurt, though terribly shaken. She was rather badly injured by masonry. A beam fell right across her hands, crushing them—it was only her indomitable courage that made her able to go on holding herself over John. The pain must have been terrible. It doesn’t bear thinking about. One mustn’t let the imagination dwell on such things.

  The father was killed in France about a month after that. John lived with his mother and her people in Scotland. He was inordinately attached to her. She had to have her hands cut off as a result of the air raid incident. He has often described to me the awfulness of seeing her, beautiful, very dignified, but with special long sleeves on her garments to cover the stumps.

  She died when he was twelve. His love for her has coloured his whole life—even to the extent, I remember at college, of his being preoccupied by anyone who bore the same or a similar name. Her name, by the way, was Miriam.

  A tragic story, all of it. And now this ending to it. Terrible, terrible­.

  Many thanks to you, Mr. Grant, for all the trouble you and your good wife have gone to on John’s behalf throughout this whole ghastly business. If there is any mortal thing I can do, do not hesitate to let me know of it.

  I am, sir,

  Your obedient servant,

  Herbert Campion.

  Another Planet

  A ROMANCE

  There was a girl called Lily and she met a boy named Harry. They met at a street corner: and after they had talked and laughed a great deal, they walked home together. Harry had very straight shoulders and a hat well tilted to the right. They passed many young men very like him—they might have been his reflections in so many mirrors. But Lily did not notice them.

  At the foot of the stair, in the darkness, Harry kissed Lily and ran his hand over her stomach. Lily clung to Harry as she had seen girls do on the films. Then she ran quickly upstairs.

  The next night Harry and Lily met again. They walked up and down several streets together and then had cups of tea in a dingy snack bar. After that Harry took Lily home again and they went through the same procedure as on the previous night, only more intimately and passionately. So it came about that Lily was Harry’s girl and he was her boy.

  Lily had had boys before, and she knew that Harry had had girls. But this time there was a difference. For it seemed to Lily that Harry lived on another planet. How could she have explained? His straight shoulders were not the same as other boys’, his tilted hat was not the same as their tilted hats. Other young men used words like “bitch” very frequently. So did Harry—but in a different way. When he said: “So-and-so is a bitch,” he said it from another planet.

  So they walked along many streets together, and drank many cups of tea, and saw many films. They were very intimate at the foot of the stairs and in other dark corners. Lily knew that Harry had been intimate with other girls in dark corners, and she had certainly known other boys: but she hated to think of that somehow. She didn’t think of it, then. She had Harry—although he still seemed to be on another planet. It was, indeed, as if everything were happening on another planet.

  One night Harry got drunk. He was out with some of the boys. One of the boys disagreed with something that Harry said. Harry repeated his statement more loudly and the boy punched him on the chin. So Harry kicked the boy in the stomach, and stood over him pugnaciously, w
aiting for him to rise. But he did not rise. His face turned purple and his eyes stuck out of his head like Bristol marbles. They discovered later that the kick in the stomach had caused hernia.

  One of Harry’s friends told Lily that her boy was in prison. But she didn’t believe him. Later, she heard people say that Harry was probably going to be hanged. She didn’t believe that either: it was happening on another planet. She sat in a large room while men in wigs talked at great length about Harry, who stood in a box, very pale and frightened. And it seemed to Lily that the ways of this other planet were inexpressibly strange.

  They did decide to hang Harry. To Lily, of course, this was simply fantastic. She visited him in prison for a few minutes, but she knew he wasn’t there at all, really.

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said, over and over again, stroking his hand through the bars. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  Harry did not move. He stared at her as if he were dead, with his eyes like Bristol marbles. But suddenly his face twisted and his lips writhed.

  “Get away, you bitch—get away!” he screamed. And he tore his hand from her. Then he fell down on the floor of his cell and began sobbing.

  “I’m sorry, Harry,” she said. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

  They led her away. She knew that she hadn’t been speaking to Harry at all, that it had all happened on another planet. She could almost have laughed at all the misunderstanding that was going on.

  They told Lily that Harry would be hanged on a certain morning, very early, and she got up and went down to the prison. It was on another planet that a hanging was taking place. Harry would come out to meet her very soon.

  But he did not come. The appointed time passed and Harry did not come. So Lily set out to look for him. She walked along all the dingy streets and peered into all the snackbars. She knew she would meet him. Now and then, among the young men with straight shoulders who passed and repassed, she thought that perhaps . . . but no: not Harry.

  At night, Lily found herself beside the river. There were very few people about and it was dark. She looked over the parapet. The river was dark, too, and cold. But Lily did not care.