Somebody at the Door
By
RAYMOND POSTGATE
*
How often I have smiled to see, in a story which pretended to show me the life of Paris or of London, five or six persons, always the same, meet by chance in the most varying places. “From their box the Mortevilles suddenly saw the Duponts sitting in the stalls”; next, “on entering the enclosure the first pretty woman Jacques Dupont met was Alice Morteville”; next, “from the surging crowd of demonstrators Pierre Morteville saw rising the energetic head of Jacques Dupont.” The author may work as hard as he chooses after that in describing to us the immense surging crowd, the brilliant attendance in the enclosure, and paint in the background as much as he can; the poor man does not realize that his Duponts and Mortevilles, as soon as they “meet” and because they meet with such deplorable ease, annihilate all immensity around themselves, prevent me believing that Paris or London are anything enormous, where one may be lost, and make these cities suddenly little places like Landerneau.…
The reader will not see this vast work arrange itself, according to traditional artifice, around a miraculously chosen central figure. He cannot count on a rectilinear action, whose movement will carry you along without troubling your laziness, nor even on a too-simple harmony between multiple actions, which in its turn becomes a convention. He will guess that very often the thread of the story will seem to break, and the interest be suspended or scattered—that at the moment when he begins to be familiar with a character, to enter into his cares and his little world, and to watch the future through the same window as he does, he will be suddenly requested to transport himself far away from there, and take up quite different disputes.
(Extracts from the Preface to “Men of Good Will” by Jules Romains, restating the principles of Unanimism.)
*
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
A Note on the Author
Chapter I
1
January, 1942, was a hard month in London. Friday, January 16th, was one of its bleakest days. Snow had fallen on the Wednesday and Thursday, rain during Thursday night. Enough snow had been left by the rain to form piles of slush in gutters and sideroads. Early in the morning it had frozen; the slush had become hard rutted cakes, and a thin film of ice had formed on the roads and sidewalks. Some, but not much, of this had been melted by the dull red sun which shone for a little while through the mist in the middle of the day. By 4.30 the sun was obscured by clouds; soon sleet began to fall, and a strong, bitterly cold wind sprang up. By six o’clock, when the darkness was pitch-black, the thermometer touched the lowest point yet that winter.
On this dreary day probably the dreariest place was a railway terminus. Those who were hurrying to catch the 6.12 at Euston may have thought so, if they had any thoughts to spare from their aching ears and fingers. One of them, Councillor Henry James Grayling, a thin man looking about 50, cursed the station and railway company aloud. Entering from the side, not through the grotesque, vast, black Euston arch, he had slipped on the frozen cobbles nearly in front of a lorry coming out in the darkness. He had fallen on his side and only been saved from injury by young Evetts, an assistant in the chemist’s department of his own firm—a man whom he did not like or trust. He had not known Evetts was near to him; he did not like the officious way in which the young man pulled him to his feet and ran his hands all over his clothes. “I’m all right. Thank you. Disgracefully dangerous place. Confound the company,” he said, ungraciously and reluctantly.
To evade his rescuer, as much as for any other reason, he crossed slantwise towards the refreshment room, picking his way in the faint blue light which was all that black-out rules allowed. He pushed through the swing doors, and then through the light-trap—a curtain—into the tearoom. It was brilliantly bright, close and hot after the dark and cold platforms.
Grayling stood for a moment, dazzled by the light and blinded by the film of steam that formed on his glasses. Waiting for it to clear, he decided that he might for once break a habit and really take a cup of coffee or tea before the train left. It would not be an indulgence, he reasoned; he was extremely cold, he had definite catarrh, and the price was low. But when the room cleared into his sight, he hesitated. The place was crowded, and it would take some time to get served. The cakes on the counter looked stale and unattractive. The tea would be served with tinned milk, if any milk were served at all; it would be scalding hot, and he had but five minutes to spare. His grey eyes, reddened at the corners, rested on a group of sailors who had been drinking beer and were shouting. One had a whisky in his hand. Grayling was a teetotaller, and envy or principle made him scowl; then, almost at once, he saw another thing which made up his mind for him. Near the door, in the crowd through which he had just pushed his way, was standing the square dark figure of a German refugee doctor—so called—whom he knew and viewed with personal dislike and political suspicion. He turned sharply and walked through the door, pushing fairly rudely against the doctor on his way. In his belief the German jostled him deliberately in return—a fresh offence.
The month before, a large number of trains had been taken off because of fuel shortage. His favourite 5.57 no longer ran. There was a crowd thrusting on to the platform where the 6.12 would come in; Grayling took his place in the queue and pushed past the barrier with the others.
The platform was already filling up; he had to thread his way to reach the far end, where he always waited for the train. To be at the end saved him perhaps a minute on arrival at Croxburn; besides, the carriages near the end tended to be less full. Inside the station the wind did not blow so continuously and hard as outside; it eddied and whirled. But it was cold enough for him to press his attaché case close to him and to fold his hands across his chest; with his case held in front of his breast he looked oddly like a man with his gasmask at the “alert.” When he reached his chosen place he stared out into the greater darkness from which the train would come. It was just possible to make out the edge of the station roof, a great dark arc against the darker sky. In the picture which it framed, the only visible things were the signal lights, red and green. They were of an unimaginable brilliance—unimaginable, that is, to those who only knew the pre-war station, whose brilliant lighting reduced the signals to unimportant glitters. Now they shone out from the thick, almost furry blackness with strong, unwinking cones of light. There seemed to be hundreds of them. Even Grayling, little accustomed to reflect on what he saw around him, wondered at the strength of the green lights. It wasn’t safe, he reflected. A plain signal to German aircraft.
The train was now five minutes overdue. The platform was getting crowded. Among the people standing near Grayling recognized, or thought he did, men with whom he travelled up every day. He was quite certain of one—the young man Evetts had reappeared. He began to edge away from him, still further up the platform, hugging his case. There was about £120 in that case, in pound notes and silver; he was not taking any risks.
Just then a flickering yellow light appeared among the reds and greens. The crowd moved, and a sound like a communal grunt of hope appeared; perhaps that was the light on the front of the engine of the delayed train? It jigged tantalizingly, but did not seem to come nearer. At last, but so slowly, it grew brighter, then it swerved to one side, and then, quite suddenly, there appeared behind it the black bulk of an engine, and rattling and panting the train pulled in, dead and dark with all its blinds drawn. As it came in Grayling saw that the
company had made some effort to allow for the increased traffic. Extra carriages had been added; and, in common with other cautious passengers he ran forward to where the platform sloped down in a long ramp, in order to get into these additional and probably less crowded carriages. Once again, to his annoyance, he was jostled in the rush, and lost his favourable position by clinging anxiously to his case. When he did enter a carriage he found indignantly that all the corner seats had been taken, one, of course, by the wretched man Evetts. There was no sense in going to find another carriage, and in any case he was being pushed from behind by other travellers. He sat next to Evetts, coughing pointedly from the fumes of the large and foul pipe which the young man was smoking. The hint, if it was one, was not taken. Next to him there sat down with a thump a rather heavy man in clerical dress; he recognized in the dim light of the two lamps that were allowed the Vicar of Croxburn, his colleague on the Town Council. He nodded to him curtly: the Vicar was like himself a Conservative—or Ratepayers’ Association member as they called themselves—but the two were all the same generally in disagreement. He recognized two other persons in the carriage. In the corner opposite was a large-nosed dark little man, just outside the pool of the lamplight; he was fairly sure that that was Ransom, a corporal in the Home Guard platoon in which he was a second lieutenant, and a damned bad corporal at that. A little further along on the same side was a handsome, fair young man with a club foot; he glanced at Grayling, blushed scarlet with embarrassment and looked away. Grayling’s face became harder and angrier; but just at this moment a heavy bulk pushed in between them, and there sat down, dead opposite to him, the refugee doctor. Grayling drew himself back, hideously and openly affronted. But there was nothing that he could do to expel the German. He pulled himself stiffly back and took out his handkerchief, deliberately holding it in front of his nose, as if to protect himself from a disgusting smell. The German took no notice; or, if he did, did not show it.
In the far corner there was a fat middle-aged woman whom Grayling did not recognize; with her there was a small girl of about thirteen, in school uniform and with a running nose. Opposite them were two young working men in overalls whom he didn’t know either. Something appeared to have amused them excessively; they kept bursting into fits of loud laughter and exchanging half sentences, incomprehensible to the outsider, about an event that had apparently occurred at work. Their most frequent word was “bloody,” but they suppressed more coloured adjectives in deference to the company. The Vicar blew his nose with some violence, and Evetts withdrew his pipe to sneeze. Infected by their example, Grayling also blew his nose, and for a moment the carriage was echoing with sneezes, noseblows and coughs. At that moment the train started with a violent jerk, the passengers were thrown forward and Evetts’ bag, which he had put in the rack, fell on to Grayling’s head. Evetts leant forward, apologized, and pulled it back again; Grayling replied inaudibly.
Thereafter the train ran its usual course, stopping at each station as suburban trains do. After the fourth station, one of the exuberant workmen turned his attention to reading the inscriptions inside the carriage. It was an old carriage, brought back into service for the war period; and its notices had had more than their fair share of schoolboy emendations. The jests were neither very good nor very new, but the reader professed to find them overwhelming. To decipher them, he had to peer very closely, right past Grayling’s shoulder in one case, and to move right down the carriage, which he did without embarrassment. “Please restrain your ticket,” and “Do not leap out of the window” were established jokes; but he appeared never before to have seen the simple injunction: “Before alighting, wait until the train stops.” On the door itself the advice “To lower window, pull strap towards you” had defeated the inscription writer: he had got as far as “To love widow,” but had then given up in despair. The explorer’s colleague began to offer suggestions but was hastily hushed. The cream, however, was a notice above Grayling’s head, newly put up because of the war. By the simple but grandiose process of turning an “i” into an “o” it had been made to read: “During the blackout, blonds must be pulled down and kept down.” The Vicar was moved to protest at the delighted elaboration of this thesis that followed, and the reader fell into an abashed silence.
Nothing else noteworthy occurred. The passengers were silent, seeming to dislike each other’s company. Most had colds; all were cold. The young man who had blushed so darkly at the sight of Grayling, glanced at him once or twice with a very queer expression, but said nothing.
After three-quarters of an hour, the train pulled into the suburb of Croxburn. Most of the passengers got out, leaving the woman and her child, and the two workmen to go on to a later station. Grayling avoided speaking to anyone of his companions, got first through the turnstile, and was almost immediately hidden in the moonless night.
2
The Vicar made his way cautiously home; he had no electric torch and the ground was slippery underfoot. He prodded carefully with his umbrella when he thought that he had reached the kerb, or when he perceived what might be a lump of half-frozen slush. Though there was no fog, his eyes were sore, and the wind seemed to chafe his face unreasonably. He wrapped his scarf round his cheeks, but they had become so tender he pulled it away again. It was half an hour’s walk to the Vicarage, and he was never more glad to arrive than he was that evening.
As he switched on the light, having carefully closed the door first, his housekeeper, who had come out to meet him, gave a faint squeal: “Oh, sir, you’ve got that barber’s rash again. Look at your face!” The Vicar stared at himself in the long hall mirror, as much as his smarting eyes would allow. It was true; the left side of his face was covered by a pink rash, and it was certainly itching very unpleasantly. Some months before he had been troubled by a skin disease caught from a barber’s shop; he tutted irritably at this sign of its return.
He went upstairs rather heavily, and routed out from a medicine cupboard the remains of a zinc ointment prescribed for him at the time. In the bathroom, he rubbed some of it on lightly, and at the same time bathed his eyes with boracic lotion. These amateur operations eased his discomfort to some extent, and he was able to eat his dinner. But his eyes and skin still remained troublesome, and half-past ten he was wondering whether it was not worth while, even on so foul a night, to go down the road to call on Dr. Hopkins. At that moment the telephone bell rang. He lumbered across the room and answered it.
“Croxburn 0015.”
A cold, level, feminine voice replied: “Is that the Vicar speaking?”
“Yes.”
“This is Mrs. Grayling. I wonder if you could spare the time to come and see my husband.”
“I think so—I mean I—” The Vicar was puzzled at the request, and showed it.
“I think he is dying,” went on the voice, which seemed to have some difficulty in selecting its words, but showed no other emotion at all. “That is to say, he is certainly very ill. The doctor is with him now. But as he is one of your churchwardens, I thought perhaps you should be there.” It might have been a committee meeting to which Mrs. Grayling was inviting the Vicar.
“Oh, dear me, dear me. I am sorry. Has he—er—asked for me?”
“He cannot speak.”
“Oh.” The Vicar was distinctly jolted. “I will come: at once.”
Croxburn is one of the many huge “dormitory” suburbs round London, mostly built up in the between-wars period. There is a small nucleus of the old village, consisting of undistinguished Victorian houses, but the body of the borough consists of two-story houses, sold to middle-class occupants by building societies, on the instalment plan. Like every other, it has its Park Drive, Elm Avenue, Laburnum Grove and such roads, all alike and with identical houses, but made to curl and wind in a manner intended to recall an old English village. It makes it very easy for the stranger to lose his way, and even for the native it enforces long detours.
It took the Vicar half an hour to reach the Grayling ho
use, and he had ample time to reflect on the character of the man to whose side he had been called.
His emotion was chiefly that of surprise. It was true that Grayling was a churchwarden at St. Mary’s, but he very much doubted whether he had any religious feeling. He was quite sure Mrs. Grayling had none at all. She was a very good-looking, self-possessed woman some twenty years or so younger than her husband; and the last time that the Vicar had taken tea at their house—a long while ago—she had told him she was not a Christian, and had spent most of her time trying to vex him with the more childish atheist puzzlers, such as “Who was Cain’s wife?” Grayling himself was one of the well-established clique which had had the Town Council in its pocket ever since there had been a Town Council. He had attached himself to the parish church of St. Mary the Virgin for no better reason, the Vicar thought, than that it was a form of municipal activity, and he intended to keep his hand on every local affair that he could. The Vicar had attempted, not being High Church, to drop “the Virgin” from the church’s name; Grayling had succeeded in preventing him, and the Vicar did not think he was uncharitable in saying (and he had done so more than once) that conviction played no part in the Councillor’s interference. Grayling attended service as rarely as was compatible with his churchwardenship; since the Home Guard had taken to parading every Sunday he had not attended at all, though Evensong never clashed with his military duties. The Vicar wondered if he could bring himself to believe that danger had brought out unsuspected spiritual earnestness in the Councillor. Forgetting for the minute that Mrs. Grayling had said her husband could not speak, the Vicar allowed himself to play with the idea that he might be being summoned to hear a confession. The near approach of death had a chastening effect on even the most hardy. He had long suspected Councillor Grayling and certain other members of the Council of corruption. The Gas Committee, of which Grayling was chairman, published very attenuated accounts, and the Vicar had been given three very circumstantial stories of graft—two dealing with the allocation of contracts and one with secret rebates. He had been investigating these, as he believed privately. (But here he was wrong; his activities were well known to those concerned. The Vicar believed himself to be a patient man with plenty of worldly cunning; as are most people who hold that belief he was short-tempered and naïve.) He wondered if, before meeting his Maker, Grayling had decided to tell the truth and disclose the facts to the one man on the Council who could be trusted not to hesitate in clearing out evil. He pondered over this, remembered Grayling’s character and decided it was unfortunately a very improbable hypothesis.
Somebody at the Door Page 1