Fear to Tread

by Michael Gilbert

  He found himself in a narrow hall, bare of all furniture and walled with a glazed paper which looked like oilcloth and was yellow from age rather than design. There was a narrow strip of carpet on the floor, worn nearly through, but sufficient to deaden his footsteps as he made his way toward a crack of light in the doorway at the end.

  It would be the family room. He stopped again to knock. There was a sound of a chair scraping, and a rather startled voice said: “Who’s that?” He pushed open the door. Crowdy was alone in the room. He was sitting at a table with a piece of paper pinned out in front of him and he had been doing something with pens, steel rulers and Indian ink. From where he stood he could see the end of one word – it looked like – AGE followed by PA – which was the beginning of another word.

  Crowdy’s face was as white as a sheet. He stood, saying nothing.

  “I’m sorry to butt in,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I only came to tell you—”

  He got no further. The door behind him burst open. Before he could turn he was seized by the collar and run out into the passage. When he got free and managed to turn round, he saw that it was Mr. Crowdy. He had only met him once before. His first idea was that he was drunk.

  The heavy face was dark red, the eyes staring.

  “Get out of here and stay out. Keep going.”

  “Really, I—”

  “Bloody snoopers.”

  “I only came to tell you—”

  “Who sked you to come in?”

  “Well, no one—”

  “Then go out and keep out. And keep your bloody great nose out of my house. Sticking it in where it isn’t asked for. Snoopers, schoolmasters—”

  Conscious that the steep front steps with a drop into the area on either side, might not be the best place for a harassed retreat Mr. Wetherall broke clear and ran from the house. When he reached the pavement he turned. Mr. Crowdy had not followed him. He was standing in the doorway – his face still red and his mouth working.

  “I must protest—” began Mr. Wetherall.

  “Keep it for the boys,” said Mr. Crowdy. The door slammed.

  Mr. Wetherall walked very fast down the street. His breath was coming in gasps, as if he had been running. His heart was thudding and his mouth felt dry. Real, deliberate, unprovoked rudeness can be quite as shocking as physical violence. He felt as if his face had been smacked. He walked for ten minutes before he could trust himself to get on to a bus.

  3

  SOUTH OF THE RIVER.

  JOCK’S PULL-IN FOR CARMEN

  A historian looking back on Mr. Wetherall’s life from the vantage point of complete knowledge would easily see that the key to almost everything of importance in it was a quiet, inoffensive, persistent obstinacy.

  For instance, had it not been for obstinacy he would have been a form-master – might have been a house-master – in some leading school.

  On leaving Oxford in 1923, he had spent the regulation eighteen months at a teachers’ training college and had then taken a post as history master in one of the smaller public schools. On arrival, his first surprise had been the discovery that he had apparently done the wrong thing in going to a teaching college at all. It was, he discovered, to his credit that he had spent four years at Marlborough, and even more creditable that he had followed this up with a further three years at Oxford; but the attempt to fit himself for his chosen career (a gilding, as it were, of the perfectly formed lily) by actually learning to teach was not an asset at all. “After all” as a large undergraduate just down from Brasenose had remarked, “there’s nothing to this teaching business. If you play a decent game of rugger they won’t rag you – and all the stuff you’ve got to teach them’s in some book or other. You’ve got a copy. They haven’t. That’s all there is to it.”

  When Mr. Wetherall started, mildly, to talk of the technique of instruction it began to be rumoured in the staff-room that he was odd.

  Now all this, in the normal way, would have mattered very little. In fact the hearty young man from B.N.C. left at the end of the term to devote his undoubted talents to stock farming in Canada, and Mr. Wetherall might quite easily have settled down and become, in a few years, as ivy-covered as the school tower itself. But it was at this point that his obstinacy stepped in. He argued that, having devoted time and money to a training which was apparently not required in the job he was in, he had better find a job in which it was wanted. In other words, having acquired an asset, he would take it to a market where it had value. He therefore departed, at the end of 1926 for a job in a secondary school in Hornsey.

  It was neither an easy place nor an easy period for such an experiment, but on the whole he had enjoyed it very much.

  He had become an Intellectual Socialist; had picked up and in turn dropped the Communist Party and, later, the Oxford Group Movement; had found himself agreeably able to despise his friends who taught in luxury schools; and had started writing detective stories. When these were published in magazines, which was rarely, so much of the proceeds as his literary agent allowed him to keep formed a welcome addition to the Burnham Scale – all the more welcome when he met and, after a courtship conducted chiefly at the Promenade Concerts, married Alice Golightly.

  Here again his obstinacy took charge, for when his friends combined to assure him that marriage was quite impossible on an assistant master’s salary, he at once confounded them by obtaining the headmastership of a junior school at Enfield.

  On the outbreak of war he made several quite genuine attempts to get into the fight, but being short-sighted, nearly thirty-eight, and in a reserved occupation he had experienced very little return for his patriotic feelings and had been evacuated, with his school, to Leamington Spa.

  In this dreary time he must have done reasonably well, for it was on his return to London in 1946 that he was offered the headmastership of one of the largest and most up-to-date boys’ secondary schools in London, the South Borough.

  Mr. Wetherall, who was genuinely modest, wondered more than once why the choice should have fallen on him.

  II

  At breakfast, on the morning following his visit to the Crowdy house, he reflected on the happenings of the night before. Seen through the filter of a night’s rest, and in the calmer light of morning, they had lost a little of their sting.

  He thought, on the whole, that Mr. Crowdy had either been drunk, or had been suffering under the stress of a strong emotion. Working-class parents did odd things. He remembered one who whenever he had had a row with his employers, used to come and weep in the school playground; and another, who at the bidding of some obscure complex, periodically sent his two small boys to school dressed as girls and his two girls to theirs dressed as boys.

  No doubt a word with Crowdy would straighten things out.

  The postman had brought a letter from Mr. Bullfyne, his literary agent. It was an ominously large envelope and contained, as he had feared, the rejected manuscript of Death by Big Ben.

  “You might like,” wrote Mr. Bullfyne, who seemed to take a sadistic pleasure in passing on such comments, “to hear what Messrs. Prendergast & Dibbs have to say about your story.”

  Mr. Wetherall glanced through the criticisms. It was as he had feared. “Too theoretical – must have more action – does anyone ever really solve a mystery by sitting about in a dressing-gown?”

  “I was afraid that dressing-gown business was getting a bit dated,” he said.

  “Why not make him play a violin,” suggested his wife.

  “I think that’s been done too,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  When he reached the school he was plunged at once into a sea of administrative worries. Gang warfare had broken out in the lower forms. The cleaners were on strike on account of the mess in the cloak-room. Mr. Wetherall thought he detected a connection between these two recurrent items. He made a note on his pad “Beat McClure. Sack Mrs. Parsons.” The Schools Medical Officer of Health proposed to visit him to discuss compulsory inoculation against chicken
-pox.

  It was the eleven o’clock break before he got round to thinking about Crowdy, and sent Peggy to fetch him. She returned five minutes later to report that there was no sign of him.

  “What’s happened to him?”

  “He didn’t turn up this morning. I expect this may be something to do with it. Roberts brought it. He lives in the next street to Crowdy.”

  Mr. Wetherall opened the envelope. It was one which had apparently been delivered to Mr. Crowdy with some Pools literature, and Mr. Crowdy had simply crossed out his name and address and had written on it, in a curiously clerkly hand “The Headmaster.” The note inside was brief. It said:

  “My son has chicken-pox and will not be at school for approx. 3 weeks. Yrs. sincerely.”

  “Hmp!” said Mr. Wetherall. “Is there any chicken-pox in the Bricklayers district, Peggy?”

  “Search me,” said Peggy. “There’s whooping cough in the Albany Road and mumps at Waterloo.”

  Mr. Wetherall said “Hmp” again. He took down a fat and shabby folder, alphabetically indexed, ran his finger through it, and picked out a card.

  Crowdy’s father, he saw, was described as a dispatch clerk, employed by British Railways, and working at Crossways goods station.

  He slipped the card back into the folder and placed with it the note he had just received. He was about to throw the envelope away when he saw something written on the back, also in Mr. Crowdy’s handwriting. “Jock’s Pull-In for Carmen.” After a moment’s thought he put the envelope with the letter.

  After that he taught the senior class an hour of unusually absentminded history and, finding that he had an early class that afternoon which prevented him going home, slipped out to get himself some lunch.

  Outside the side gate he bumped into Luigi. The little man was in wait for him.

  “Oh, Mr. Wetherall.”

  Mr. Wetherall withdrew himself from a reverie of Mr. Crowdy, the Schools Medical Officer of Health and the Duke of Wellington.

  “Mr. Wetherall, I got to speak to you.”

  “Privately, do you mean?”

  “Yes. We speak private.”

  Mr. Wetherall hesitated. He wanted his lunch. Then he said: “All right, Luigi, come along.” He led the way back into the school and opened the door of a small class-room on the ground floor that he guessed would be empty at that hour.

  “We can sit down here for a minute if you like,” he said. Luigi collapsed into one of the desks. With his eyes wide and his hair on end he looked not unlike a large, nervous schoolboy but Mr. Wetherall felt no desire to laugh. Luigi was suffering from a complaint which he could diagnose without difficulty. He was afraid. He was empty with fear, like a deflated brown- paper bag.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “Mr. Wetherall, you must stop it. I should not have spoken to you.” He hammered the top of the desk in his earnestness. “You must stop it at once.”

  “Stop what?”

  “It was stupid of me. I was mad. I said certain things”—he swallowed hard—”they were not true. Now you must stop.”

  “Look here,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I want my lunch. If you can’t talk sense, I shall have to ask you to go. What am I supposed to stop?”

  “You went to see Sergeant Donovan?”

  “Well – yes, I did.”

  “You went also to see Mr. Crowdy. I know. You must not do it. Mr. Wetherall. Please.”

  Mr. Wetherall was trying to adjust himself to the slight nervous reflex which everyone must experience when they find that, unknown to themselves, their movements have been of interest to others.

  “I suppose it’s no good telling you,” he said at last, “that there was absolutely no connection whatever between going to see Sergeant Donovan, and Crowdy.”

  “Mr. Wetherall, please don’t do it. I—I shall get into trouble. I been in trouble already.”

  “Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. He could guess about that trouble. It was not necessarily the sort of trouble which would leave a black eye or a split lip; but it was real trouble, all the same.

  “All right,” he said. “Whatever it is you think I’ve been doing, I promise I won’t do it again.”

  Luigi’s relief at this rather qualified concession was astonishing. “That’s right,” he said. “Now we all forget about it, eh?” He jumped up, shook Mr. Wetherall’s hand, and shot cut of the room.

  Mr. Wetherall followed, but more slowly. He hardly noticed what he was given to eat for lunch.

  He was fully aware of the curious strands of his own character. But the fact that he recognised them, as any toper or drug addict may recognise and deplore his own weaknesses, did not make him competent to counteract them.

  He knew, for instance, that he was afflicted with the most malignant type of obstinacy. Did fate so much as nudge him in one direction, he would automatically strive to move in an opposite one. He could no more help doing this than a frog’s leg could help jumping when an electric current was passed through it. It was immaterial that this opposite direction might be one in which he had no real desire to go – one in which every rational faculty told him he ought not to go. It was the spirit which used to take Christian martyrs into the arena, and which forces small wage-earners to thrust themselves twice daily into impossibly crowded underground trains. It has led to quite a few unsuitable marriages.

  After paying the bill he walked back in the direction of the Crowdy house. It would have been no use asking him why he did this, because he had no idea himself.

  The street was empty and quiet, and the house looked inoffensive. Mr. Wetherall knocked, waited, knocked again and then waited for a long time. I’ll count twenty, he told his conscience, and then if no one comes I’ll give it up. He had reached fifteen when he heard a faint shuffling, as of slippered feet. Then the door opened a few inches and a very old woman looked out, a faded, dusty amalgam of whites and greys and blacks.

  “Is Mr. Crowdy at home?”

  “No, he ent,” said the old lady.

  “Is his son in the house?”

  “No, he ent in neither.”

  “Is there anyone at home?”

  “Not except for me there ent a creature in the house.”

  The lie was at once given to this statement by the appearance of a sleek black cat, which shot through the narrow opening and disappeared down the area.

  “There now,” said the old lady, “Tibby’s out. He won’t come back now till tomorrow morning.”

  “Do you know where they are?”

  “They all gone to work.”

  “What?” said Mr. Wetherall. “The boy as well? But he’s—”

  “He’s gone fifteen,” said the old lady, who seemed to have her wits about her. “Why shouldn’t he work? I started earning a wage when I was eight,” she added.

  “I—well—it can’t be helped.” Mr. Wetherall felt frustrated. “I’ll come back this evening.”

  “You’re the schoolmaster, ent you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll tell him you called.” She parted her gums in a smile which might have been malicious, but was probably merely friendly.

  Mr. Wetherall walked back to the school, deep in thought. When he got there he sent for Peggy.

  “Do we know anyone on the railway?” he asked.

  “Plenty, I should think,” said Peggy. “It’s a favourite job round here.”

  “Crossways?”

  “I’ll have a look. Any particular sort of person you had in mind?”

  “Well – I don’t want a boy who just joined last week as a porter. Someone with a bit of seniority—”

  Peggy was back within five minutes. “William Fisher’s the man you want.”

  “Bill Fisher. Yes.” Mr. Wetherall had to go back nearly twenty years to place him. A fat, cheerful boy, always late for school but popular with everyone.

  “He’s administrative grade,” said Peggy. “I think that means some sort of staff manager. And he was at Crossways when he last had
a note of him. That’s the number. Extension 341.”

  Extension 341 admitted that it had heard of Bill Fisher. It rather thought he had left Crossways and gone to Waterloo. It suggested an extension number at Waterloo.

  This extension was even more helpful. It thought Fisher was definitely at Waterloo. It suggested another extension.

  Here Mr. Wetherall found his man.

  After he had introduced himself he mentioned what was in his mind. Like all schoolmasters and clergymen he was skilled in asking extraordinary favours of comparative strangers. He decided to stick, as closely as possible, to the truth.

  “You see,” he said, “this boy – he’s just leaving – I’m not happy about him. Crowdy’s the name. He’s got some sort of job on the railway – at Crossways, I think – with his father. I wanted to talk to someone who could give me the form—”

  “Delighted,” said Fisher. “Was there anything particular you had in mind?”

  Mr. Wetherall said it was difficult to talk about it over the telephone.

  Fisher thought this over. What, he suggested, did Mr. Wetherall say to a talk over a bite somewhere that evening.

  Mr. Wetherall said that would suit him very well.

  “I’m off at six,” said Fisher. “I usually have a snack at a place by the Elephant – I don’t suppose it’s much in your line – Jock’s Café. A lot of railwaymen use it.”

  Something stirred in Mr. Wetherall’s memory.

  “Jock’s Pull-In for Carmen,” he said.

  “That’s right. You know the place? Say six-thirty.”

  “Splendid,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Splendid.” He rang off. He had the distinct feeling that he might have started something. The odd thing was that, at the time, he felt quite pleased about it.

  Jock’s Pull-In was more pretentious than its name suggested. It was a long, bright room, full of marble-topped iron-legged tables. It was crowded with railwaymen, mostly outdoor men and drivers. The place had its own car park, formed of a blitzed site, at the back of the restaurant, and this was packed with vans and trailers.