Hangover Square

by Patrick Hamilton

  There was no sensation, but there was something to be done. Emphatically, most emphatically there was something to be done. So soon as he had recovered from the surprise – but nowadays it was hardly a surprise – of that snap in his head, that break in the sound-track, that sudden burst into a new, silent world – so soon as he had recovered from this he was aware that something had to be done. He could not think what it was at first, but this did not worry him. He could never think of it at first, but it would come: if he didn’t nag at it, but relaxed mentally, it would come.

  For two or three minutes he walked along in a dream, barely conscious of anything. The motion of his body caused his raincoat to make a small thundering noise: his big sports shoes creaked and rustled on the grass of the cliff-top. On his left, down below, lay the vast grey sweep of the Wash under the sombre sky of Christmas afternoon: on his right the scrappy villas in the unfinished muddy roads. A few couples were about, cold, despairing, bowed down by the hopeless emptiness and misery of the season and time of day. He passed a shelter, around which some children were running, firing toy pistols at each other. Then he remembered, without any difficulty, what it was he had to do: he had to kill Netta Longdon.

  He was going to kill her, and then he was going to Maidenhead, where he would be happy.

  It was a relief to him to have remembered, for now he could think it all out. He liked thinking it out: the opportunity to do so was like lighting up a pipe, something to get at, to get his teeth into.

  Why must he kill Netta? Because things had been going on too long, and he must get to Maidenhead and be peaceful and contented again. And why Maidenhead? Because he had been happy there with his sister, Ellen. They had had a splendid fortnight, and she had died a year or so later. He would go on the river again, and be at peace. He liked the High Street, too. He would not drink any more – or only an occasional beer. But first of all he had to kill Netta.

  This Netta business had been going on too long. When was he going to kill her? Soon – this year certainly. At once would be best – as soon as he got back to London – he was going back tomorrow, Boxing Day. But these things had to be planned: he had so many plans: too many. The thing was so incredibly, absurdly easy. That was why it was so difficult to choose the right plan. You had only to hit her over the head when she was not looking. You had only to ask her to turn her back to you because you had a surprise for her, and then strike her down. You had only to invite her to a window, to ask her to look down at something, and then thrown her out. You had only to put a scarf playfully round her neck, and fondle it admiringly, and then strangle her. You had only to surprise her in her bath, lift up her legs and hold her head down. All so easy: all so silent. Only there would be meddling from the police – ‘questions asked’ – that had to be remembered: he wasn’t going to have any questioning or meddling. But then of course the police couldn’t find him in Maidenhead, or if they did they couldn’t touch him there. No, there was no difficulty anywhere: it was a ‘cinch’, as they said: but it had got to be planned, and he must do the planning now. It had all been going on too long.

  When was it to be then? Tomorrow – Boxing Day – as soon as he saw her again. If he could get her alone – why not? No – there was something wrong with that. What was it? What on earth was it?… Oh yes – of course – the ten pounds. His aunt had given him ten pounds. She had given him a cheque this morning as a Christmas present. He must wait till he had spent the ten pounds – get the benefit of the ten pounds – before killing Netta. Obviously. What about the New Year, then – January the first? That seemed a good idea – starting the New Year – 1939. The New Year – the turn of the year – that meant spring before long. Then it would be warmer, Maidenhead would be warmer. He didn’t want to have to go to Maidenhead in the cold. He wanted to go on the river. Then he must wait for the Spring. It was too cold to kill Netta yet. That sounded silly, but it was a fact.

  Or was all this shilly-shallying on his part? Was he putting it off again? He was always putting it off. In some mysterious way it seemed to go right out of his head, and it had all been going on too long. Perhaps he ought to take himself in hand, and kill her while it was cold. Perhaps he ought not even to wait until he had had the benefit of his ten pounds. He had put it off such a long while now, and if he went on like this would it ever get done?

  By now he had reached the edge of the Town Golf Course and he turned round and retraced his steps. A light wind struck him in the face and roared in his ears, and he looked at the feeble sun, in the nacreous sky, declining behind the bleak little winter resort of an aunt who had come up to scratch. Strange aunts, strange Hunstantons! – how did they stand it? He had had three days of it, and he’d have a fit if he didn’t get back tomorrow. And yet Aunt Mary was a good sort, trying to do her duty by him as his nearest of kin, trying to be ‘modern’, a ‘sport’ as she called it, pretending that she liked ‘cocktails’ though she was nearly seventy. My God – ‘cocktails!’ – if she only knew! But she was a good sort. She would be cheerful at tea, and then when she saw he didn’t want to talk she would leave him alone and let him sit in his chair and read The Bar 20 Rides Again, by Clarence Mulford. But of course he wouldn’t be reading – he would be thinking of Netta and how and when he was going to kill her.

  The Christmas Day children were still playing with their Christmas Day toy pistols around the Christmas Day shelter. The wet grass glowed in the diffused afternoon light. The little pier, completely deserted, jutted out into the sea, its silhouette shaking against the grey waves, as though it trembled with cold but intended to stay where it was to demonstrate some principle. On his left he passed the Boys’ School, and then the row of boarding-houses, one after another, with their mad names; on his right the putting course and tennis courts. But no boys, and no boarders, and no putters, and no tennis players in the seaside town of his aunt on Christmas Day.

  He turned left, and went upwards and away from the sea – the Wash in which King John had lost his jewels – towards the street which contained the semi-detached villa in which tea, with Christmas cake and cold turkey (in front of an electric fire at eight o’clock), awaited him.

  Chapter Two

  Click!…

  Hullo, hullo – here we are! – here we are again!

  He was on Hunstanton station and it had happened again. Click, snap, pop – whatever you like – and it all came flooding back!

  The sound-track had been resumed with a sudden switch; the grim, dreary, mysterious silent film had vanished utterly away, and all things were bright, clear, vivacious, sane, colourful and logical around him, as he carried his bag, at three o’clock on Boxing Day, along the platform of the little seaside terminus.

  It had happened at the barrier, as he offered his ticket to be clipped by the man. You might have thought that the click of the man’s implement as he punctured the ticket had been the click inside his head, but actually it had happened a fraction of a second later – a fraction of a fraction of a second, for the man still held his ticket, and he was still looking into the man’s grey eyes, when he heard the shutter go up in his head, and everything came flooding back.

  It was like bursting up into fresh air after swimming gravely for a long time in silent, green depths: the first thing of which he was aware was the terrific sustained hissing noise coming from the engine which was to take him back to London. While he yet looked into the man’s eyes he was aware of this noise. He knew, too, perfectly well, that this noise had been going on ever since he had entered the station, while he was buying his ticket, while he was dragging his bag to the barrier. But it was only now, now that his brain had clicked back again, that he heard it. And with it every other sort of noise which had been going on before – the rolling of a station trolley, the clanking of milk-cans, the slamming of compartment doors – was heard by him for the first time. And all this in the brief moment while he still looked into the eyes of the man who had punctured his ticket. Perhaps, because of his surprise at wh
at had happened, he had looked into the eyes of the man too long. Perhaps the man had only caught his eye, had only looked at him because he had subconsciously wondered why this passenger was not getting a ‘move on’. However that might be, he had only betrayed himself for a fraction of a second, and now he was walking up the platform.

  What a noise that engine made! And yet it exhilarated him. He always had these few moments of exhilaration after his brain had ‘blinked’ and he found himself hearing and understanding sounds and sights once again. After that first tremendous rush of noise and comprehension – exactly like the roar of clarification which would accompany the snatching away, from a man’s two ears, of two oily blobs of cotton wool which he had worn for twenty-four hours – he took a simple elated pleasure in hearing and looking at everything he passed.

  Then there was the pleasure of knowing exactly what he was doing. He knew where he was, and he knew what he was doing. It was Boxing Day, and he was taking the train back to London. He had spent the Christmas holiday with his aunt who had given him ten pounds. This was a station – Hunstanton station – where he had arrived. Only it had been night when he arrived. Now he was catching the 3.4 in the afternoon. He must find a third-class compartment. Other people were going back to London, too. The engine was letting out steam, as engines will, as engines presumably have to before they start. That was a porter, whose business it was to carry luggage, and who collected a tip for doing so. There was the sea. This was a seaside town on the east coast. It was all right: it was all clear in his head again.

  What, then, had been happening in his head a few moments before – and in the long hours before that? What?… Well, never mind now. There was plenty of time to think about that when he had found a compartment. He must find an empty one so that he could be by himself. If he had any luck, he might be alone all the way to London – there oughtn’t to be many people travelling on Boxing Day.

  He walked up to the far end of the train, and selected an empty compartment. As he turned the handle of this, the hissing of the engine abruptly stopped. The station seemed to reel at the impact of the sudden hush, and then, a moment later, began to carry on its activities again in a more subdued, in an almost furtive way. That, he realized, was exactly like what happened in his head – his head, that was to say, when it went the other way, the nasty way, the bad, dead way. It had just gone the right way, and he was back in life again.

  He put his suit-case on the rack, clicked it open, and stood on the seat to see if he had packed his yellow-covered The Bar 20 Rides Again. He had. It was on the top. It was wonderful how he did things when he didn’t know what he was doing. (Or did he, at the time, in some way know what he was doing? Presumably he did.) Anyway, here was his Bar 20. He clicked the bag shut again, sat down, pulled his overcoat over his legs, put the book on his lap, and looked out of the window.

  He was back in life again. It was good to be back in life. And yet how quiet and dismal it was in this part of the world. The trolley was still being rolled about the platform at the barrier end of the station: two porters were shouting to-each other in the distance; another porter came along trying all the doors, reaching and climactically trying his own handle, and fading away again in a series of receding jabs: he could hear two people talking to each other through the wooden walls of the train, two compartments away; and if he listened he could hear, through the open window, the rhythmic purring of the mud-coloured sea, which he could see from here a hundred yards or so beyond the concrete front which was so near the station as to seem to be almost part of it. Not a soul on the front. Cold and quiet. And the sea purred gently. Dismal, dismal, dismal.

  He listened to the gentle purring of the sea, and waited for the train to start, his red face and beer-shot eyes assuming an expression of innocent vacancy and misery.

  Chapter Three

  The train shuddered once or twice, and slid slowly out towards Heacham.

  He put his feet up on the seat opposite, adjusted his body comfortably against the window, and looked idly at his shoes. Something in the sight of the pattern of the brogue on the brown leather all at once gave him a miserable feeling – a little clutch at his heart followed by an ache. For a brief moment he was at a loss to account for this pain: then he realized what it was and all his misery was upon him again. Netta! Netta!…

  He had forgotten!… For a whole five minutes – while he had walked up that platform and found a compartment, and taken his book from the suitcase, and looked out of the window while he waited for the train to start – he had been somehow tricked into not thinking about Netta! A record, certainly!… And he had been reminded of her by the sight of his own shoes. It was because the brogue on his own brown shoes was exactly the same as the brogue on the new brown shoes she had begun wearing a week or so ago. He had noticed the similarity when they were sitting in the ‘Black Hart’ having gins-and-tonic that morning after that awful blind when Mickey had passed out in the taxi. A nice state of affairs, when you’re so in love with a girl that the sight of your own shoes tears your heart open! Such was the awful associative power of physical love. He took his feet down, because he knew he could no longer catch a glimpse of his own shoes without incurring the risk of being pained.

  Five minutes’ respite, breathing space – well, that was something – getting on! But wait a moment – what about his ‘dead’ period? Did he think about Netta in his ‘dead’ moods? Or did that strange shutter which fell, that film which came over his brain, somehow cut him off from Netta, from the pre-occupation of his days and nights? Perhaps it did – perhaps it was a sort of anaesthetic which Nature had contrived to prevent him going dotty through thinking about Netta. But then if he had not been thinking about Netta, what had he been thinking about? And that reminded him. He had asked himself just that question as he walked up the platform, and he had promised himself to seek an answer to it.

  Well, then, what had he been thinking about – what went on in his head when the shutter was down? What? What?…

  It was no good. He had no idea. Not the vaguest idea. This was awful. He must try and think. He really must try and think. But what was the use of thinking? He never could remember, so why should he remember now?

  When did it start, anyway? How long had he been ‘under’? It had been a long time this time, he was certain of that. It went right back into yesterday. What could he remember of yesterday – Christmas Day? He could remember lunch – ‘Christmas Dinner’ as it was called – with his aunt. He could remember that clearly. He could remember the ultra-clean tablecloth, the unfamiliar wine-glasses, the turkey, and the mince-pies. Then he could remember having coffee afterwards. And then he said he would go and ‘walk it off’ and his aunt went up to her bedroom to sleep. He could remember putting on his raincoat in the hall. He could remember going down towards the sea, and then walking along the cliff towards the Golf Course… Ah! There you were! That was it. It must have happened while he was walking along the cliff. Yes. He was sure of it. He could see himself. He could almost hear it happening in his head, as he walked along the cliff and looked out towards the sea. Snap. But what then? What?… Nothing. A blank. Absolutely nothing. Nothing until he suddenly ‘woke up’, about ten minutes ago on Hunstanton station – ‘woke up’ to find himself looking into the eyes of the man who was clipping his ticket, and hearing the fearful hissing noise of that engine.

  Good God – he had been ‘out’ for twenty-four hours! – from about three o’clock on Christmas afternoon to three o’clock on Boxing Day. This was awful. Something ought to be done about it. He ought to go and see a doctor or something.

  What was he thinking about all that time – what was he doing? That was the point – what was he doing? It was terrifying – not to know what you thought or did for twenty-four hours. A day out of your life! He could be terrified now, he could let himself be terrified – but the thing had been happening so often recently that it had lost its terrors, and he had too many other worries. He had Netta to worry ab
out. That was one thing about Netta – you couldn’t worry about much else.

  But, really, it was awful – he ought to do something about it. Imagine it – wandering about like an automaton, a dead person, another person, a person who wasn’t you, for twenty-four hours at a stretch! And when you woke up not the minutest inkling of what the other person had been thinking or doing. You might have done anything. You might, for all you knew, have got madly drunk. You might have had a fight, and got into trouble. You might have made friends or enemies you knew nothing about. You might have got off with a girl, and arranged to meet her. You might, in some mad lark, have stolen something from a shop. You might have committed assault. You might have done something dreadful in public. You might, for all you knew, be a criminal maniac. You might have murdered your aunt!

  On the other hand it was pretty obvious that you were not a criminal maniac – and that you had not had a fight, or done anything dreadful in public, or murdered your aunt. For if you had people would have stopped you, and you would not be sitting comfortably in a third-class carriage on your way back to London. And that went for all the other times in the near and distant past – all the ‘dead’ moods you had had ever since they had begun. You had never been arrested so far, you had never shown any signs of having been in a fight, and none of your relations and friends had been murdered!

  Your friends and relations, in fact (though they certainly recognized and sometimes chaffed you for your ‘dead’ or ‘dumb’ moods), had never accused you of doing anything in the slightest way abnormal: nor had anyone whom you didn’t know ever claimed to know you.

  It was, indeed, abundantly clear from all the evidence that when the shutter was down he behaved like a perfectly reasonable, if somewhat taciturn, human being. How else could he have got to the station? How else could he have packed his bag – and put The Bar 20 Rides Again on top so that he could take it out to read in the train? How could he have bought his ticket – known where he was going? No – there was nothing to worry about. He had thought out all this before, and he had always known there was nothing to worry about.