Bottled Spider

by John Gardner

  Only a handful of years ago, Suzie thought, you could have walked down Oxford Street without even brushing shoulders with fellow pedestrians: now it seemed comparatively crowded — in spite of the bombs, the regular doses of death and destruction.

  She had only half-a-dozen or so Christmas gifts to buy but had not even found one by the time she got to Oxford Circus where she stood now, like an animal sniffing the air as though it would give her the scent of inspiration. After a moment she had a kind of brainwave and turned left into Regent Street, swerving from her chosen route to Selfridges, up near Marble Arch, where she had planned to pick up good gifts for Mummy, the Galloping Major, Charlotte, James, Vernon, Ben and little Lucy.

  Because she felt that Christmas was a time to heal wounds and build bridges, it was the Major’s present that troubled her most, but the idea that came to her in Oxford Circus had removed her concern — or to be strictly accurate, would remove it if Hamleys had what she was looking for. Her mother said that all men were children at heart and she had recalled one evening when she was trying to set her life to rights, after the Cambridge job and before the night of her row with the Major.

  ‘Used to keep me happy for hours,’ the Major had said, going on and on about his memories of childhood. Later he added, ‘Best board game I ever played. Give a lot to know where my set went. Hours of enjoyment.’

  The board game that so delighted him dated back almost to the turn of the century and had been updated a number of times. It was called Dover Patrol — the board marked out as the English Channel; counters to represent types of craft; dice to rotate the moves; rules so arcane that, Suzie suspected, only the Major himself could understand them.

  ‘Kept us happy. Rain or snow. Dover Patrol. Had another called L’Attaque as well. Both good. All of us young people. Happy.’ The Major had a kind of shorthand speech that one had to live with for a while before it became comprehensible, and it was at this point that her mother, now Mrs Gordon-Lowe, had said — Suzie recalled with profound joy — ‘Yes, you know they still sell it at Hamleys. I’ve seen it there.’

  Dover Patrol: the reason why Suzie now walked smartly down Regent Street with a Christmas carol in her head.

  ‘In Dulce Jubilo’.

  And coming up the street, from the opposite direction, a lonely figure ambled along the gutter: his collar turned up, his oblong piece of cotton masking the lower part of his face, and the wide-brimmed hat pulled down to conceal the forehead. Golly Goldfinch, the abomination, came scuffling along on an errand for a bloke in Berwick Street Market.

  So, among the hurrying people they approached one another, oblivious and unaware: one with his mind obsessed by the other — ‘Kill the lady policeman’ — the other with her thoughts dominated by the idea that she may just possibly heal the rift with her stepfather. Heal it by buying a board game called Dover Patrol.

  As they came abreast, each caught a quick glimpse of the other. Golly felt as if an electric probe had reached behind his eyes, but he didn’t know why. There was turmoil and panic in his head, racing through his nerves, singing with that terrible discordant scream that went through him at times when he killed: when the rooks flew up from the skeletal winter trees.

  Suzie saw him. Briefly saw him. Glimpsed him and registered that he displayed no face and knew it meant something: that the powerfully moving man had some secret he withheld, kept close and unshared.

  She felt a spark of danger, yet sensed only the tiniest chill of fear as they passed one another: part dread, part a frisson of excitement she associated only with the pleasure of Christmas that was almost upon them: a touch of peace in the boiling cauldron.

  Half an hour later she came out of Hamleys not only with Dover Patrol tucked under her arm, but also L’Attaque: both games and with prices so reasonable that she felt it would be mean not to be generous. She also had a separate bag holding a splendid teddy bear in a velvet jacket for Lucy. Suzie Mountford retraced her steps and was quickly back on track for Selfridges, where she hoped to get a bright scarf for her mum, the book Charlotte wanted — Ernest Hemingway’s new novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls, about the Spanish Civil War — another that would suit James, something, undecided as yet, to brighten up Vernon’s military life, and a book of drawings for Ben to colour.

  This last was an essential, for colouring was Ben’s best thing: locked within his own private and silent world, he could sit for hours with his crayons and a book, engrossed and working with pleasure; and by chance Suzie was to find the perfect present. As she walked into Selfridges toy department, where the staff had at least made an attempt to work up some Christmas spirit by putting up a tree decked with tinsel and spun glass baubles, she saw a hastily printed notice — IDEAL XMAS GIFT FOR YOUNGER CHILDREN. FORMER CORONATION COLOURING SETS 2/6d.

  Several people were showing an immediate interest while the floorwalker and a pair of assistants hovered in anticipation.

  ‘Yes, madam, they’ve been discovered in one of our warehouses. I remember them at coronation time a couple of years ago. These are all we have and they’ll sell very quickly, I shouldn’t wonder. Now that things are so uncertain. The bombing. The invasion.’

  Suzie had a vague memory of seeing these boxes on sale at the time of George VI’s and Queen Elizabeth’s coronation in the summer of 1937. There was a box containing about two hundred quarto-sized cards, each displaying a line drawing of some aspect of the coronation: heralds, the yeoman bodyguards, gentleman ushers, the King and the Queen themselves, the Earl Marshal of England, pages, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, the royal regalia, the state coach and the uniformed soldiers of every possible military unit in the great procession, from the Life Guards and the Blues and Royals to representative regiments from everywhere in the Empire. The box was topped off with a set of crayons and was, as the shopwalker said, a little loudly — ‘A snip for half-a-crown’.

  She bought three, because of Ben’s insatiable demands as a colourer. So, clutching yet another parcel, Suzie made for the restaurant and ate a dismal meal: a thin soup masquerading as tomato, then macaroni cheese, as claggy as the cauliflower cheese she’d had with Shirley on the previous day, and a rhubarb tart, that was. The cup of coffee left her with doubts about what the liquid really contained: it tasted disgustingly bitter, flavoured heavily with chicory. Suzie smoked two cigarettes while she drank her coffee, sipping the brew as though it were medicine.

  She browsed away the next hour, picking up a scarf in red and gold even though she knew her mother would make a joke and say it would match her eyes. In the book department she bought For Whom the Bell Tolls, for Charlotte — ‘You’d think people are having enough war without the Spanish Civil War as well,’ said the assistant — and a new much desired Boy’s Book of Aeroplanes that she knew James coveted. She then got a present for herself: a nice grey woollen skirt that would be splendid for Christmas morning, and she kept her eye open for a blouse in a similar shade to go with it.

  Suzie was still worrying over what to get for her brother-in-law, Vernon, then it came to her as she entered the gentlemen’s clothing department. ‘In a few weeks I’ll be starved for some little luxury,’ he had said the last time she’d seen him. From the Royal Marine depot at Deal he was to go on to the Pre-OCTU (Officer Cadet Training Unit) at Exton, down in the West Country, down in Devon where, rumour had it, the eight-week course was physically and mentally brutal.

  Silk pyjamas, Suzie thought. That’s it exactly. Silk pyjamas for the Royal Marines — backbone of the new special force, the Commandos, the spearhead troops to ‘set Europe ablaze’, as Winston Churchill ordered. As yet clothes were not rationed — though there were rumours that it would soon come to that — and she didn’t even think of the possibility that Vernon could be ridiculed and teased by his fellow ‘bootnecks’.

  It was almost half-past three when she emerged into the street clutching another parcel containing a pair of red and white silk pyjamas. Day was fast turning into dusk even at this hour, a
nd Oxford Street had started to take on its menacing night clothing. What little colour there had been was now drained from the street, and danger hung invisible in the air. Words came into her head from school. Shakespeare, she thought — ‘grim-visaged war’ — but she could never identify the play, even if it did come from Shakespeare. It was how it felt out in the cold and on the street that she remembered from other days and other times.

  But around her there was nervousness, concern for the terror by night — as the prayer-book called it — that so often came with the throb of its engines and the shriek of its bombs hurtling down to alter the landscape and kill indiscriminately without even seeing those who died in a twinkling of an eye.

  Like others on the street, Suzie now scuttled into the Underground and within ten minutes was on the train rocking back towards the Strand and her short walk to Upper St Martin’s Lane. As the cold, sinewy night took over she was again aware that the war was out there, ready to bite with little warning: with no reason the sinister prancing death could leap from the darkness.

  She tried to lengthen her strides through the murk ... wondering how those women must have felt fumbling, terrified, grabbing and retching as the wire bit into their throats. Indescribable, she thought, being choked with piano wire, neck arched, mouth wide in a silent scream as the windpipe collapsed. And the picture of the rigid, forbidding body of Emily Baccus came into her head, drenching her with fright, so that she double-locked the front door of the flat behind her, then secured the top and bottom bolts, locking herself in, then feeling the dread again and going through the rooms one at a time to make certain she was alone.

  By half-past four she was lying in a hot bath, irrigating her body, washing away the aches, pains and tensions. Only now she began to look forward to the evening and the novel experience of having dinner with her boss, the attractive Tommy Livermore. Dandy Tom.

  *

  In some things, Joshua Dance insisted on order. He had his own routine and, like an autistic child, he couldn’t bear to have the routine upset. As a child, his morning visit to the lavatory had had within it a secret enchantment, a superstition that set in motion — bad choice of word — a spell that could ease the entire day into one of good luck. He would unlock the door, pull the dangling chain and dash with all haste down the passageway. Half-way along there was a loose board that squeaked. He had to reach the board before the toilet flushed or the day would be ruined. If he managed it then the next twenty-four hours would be serene.

  Still beset by these little fortune-deciding acts. Josh Dance, one time David Slaughter — but what’s in a name? — was at times convinced that his damaged leg was the result of routine gone wrong.

  Lieutenant Dance, as he was with the British Expeditionary Force — the BEF, or Back Every Friday as it was sometimes referred to — in France, had been ordered to hold a small, dusty track, a mile or so outside Dunkirk. He had eight men, live rifles, a Bren gun, several grenades and a determination to hold the line or die in the attempt. His men knew him, and worked well with him. They were aware, for instance, that Mr Dance liked his morning tea served to him promptly at eight o’clock. So he was put out when he crossed the road, on that first and last morning in June, to the little shack where they were brewing up, and found that the tea wasn’t ready. In effect he had to wait until ten minutes past eight before he was given his big tin mug. In the end he was ten minutes late in crossing the road back to the barn around which he had positioned his men.

  He crouched, ran and reached the middle of the chalky road at the same moment as the bullet that shattered his leg and left him sprawling on the dusty ground with all hell going on around him.

  His sergeant, ‘Tubby’ Shaw, got a posthumous Military Medal for saving Lieutenant Dance’s life, and Privates Rob Auld and Colin Knight were both mentioned in dispatches for getting the wounded officer off the road and across to the Dunkirk beaches, along the famous Mole and on to a ship and to a naval surgeon lieutenant-commander who saved the leg and got the young officer back to Blighty on that bright, warm and bloody summer’s day. When he thought about it, Josh Dance remained convinced that had he been given his tea at the preferred time of eight o’clock, he would have remained with his men.

  And probably died with them.

  Each weekday, there was a routine with Mr Dance’s evening paper which also had its effect on life, death and the future. If Josh did not get his evening paper by five minutes past three in the afternoon, danger would stalk until fifteen-oh-five the next day. So, Miss Holroyd would leave the building in Albemarle Street at five minutes to three o’clock every afternoon and walk to the junction of Piccadilly where old Nosey sold the News, the Star and the Standard.

  Nosey was a living warning from the fleshpots of the 1914-18 war. Nosey had no nose, only two small holes where it had been: the extremity possibly lost to the creeping hell of syphilis. And it was to Nosey that Miss Holroyd walked each weekday afternoon. It was something she dreaded, yet she was more terrified of Mr Dance’s wrath if she was a minute late in bringing his paper into the office.

  She had been late with Mr Dance’s paper on a number of occasions and his fury was one of the reasons she wanted to leave Jewell, Baccus & Dance as quickly as possible to join the WRNS, not because of the uniform, as Miss Burrage suspected, but because one of her boyfriends, Chris — now Leading Seaman — Leach, had told her that ‘the Andrew’ was the only service to join. She had to ask around to find out that ‘the Andrew’ was naval slang for the Royal Navy, just as ‘the oggin’ or ‘oggwash’ was the sea.

  On Saturday afternoons, when he was at home (he would sometimes go to a cinema matinée on Saturday afternoons), Joshua Dance would walk to Nosey himself, and stroll back with the Evening Standard neatly tucked under his arm.

  He would sit quietly in one of his leather chairs in his room off the main office, and read the paper between three five and three thirty-five on a Saturday afternoon. So it was around three fifteen on this present Saturday that he suddenly shot bolt upright as he came to page three and the story spread across four columns headed WOMAN DEAD IN FLATS! FOUL PLAY SUSPECTED! LINK WITH ANNOUNCER DEATH SUSPECTED!

  Scotland Yard has issued a statement saying that the body of a woman, identified as Miss Emily Baccus of 320 Derbyshire Mansions, Marylebone, was found dead in a friend’s flat in the same building. Miss Baccus’s body was discovered by Detective Chief Superintendent Thomas Livermore early yesterday evening.

  Mr Livermore is at the head of a team of detectives investigating a number of murder cases including the death of the BBC announcer Miss Josephine Benton.

  Unconfirmed reports suggest that Miss Baccus was found dead in a flat belonging to the late Miss Benton in Derbyshire Mansions. It is thought that Detective Sergeant Susannah Mountford was with Mr Livermore’s team when the body of Miss Baccus was discovered. Recently concern was expressed when it was thought Sergeant Mountford, a female police officer, was in charge of the investigation of Miss Benton’s murder. At the time a Home Office spokesman said. ‘The investigation of a foul and brutal murder, such as the killing of Miss Benton, does not, in my mind, appear to be the best way to use our resources. I do not think it is a woman’s job.’

  ‘No!’ Josh Dance cried aloud from his chair. ‘No! It wasn’t. It couldn’t have been. But it wasn’t like that.’

  He telephoned Camford Hill Police Station and asked to speak with Detective Sergeant Mountford, but was put through to WDC Cox.

  ‘Sergeant Mountford?’ he asked.

  ‘She’s not on duty today, sir. It’s WDC Cox, can I help?’

  ‘My name’s Joshua Dance ...’

  ‘Oh yes, Mr Dance, we met the other day. I was with Sergeant Mountford when we came to your offices.’

  ‘Well, yes. I wanted to speak to Sergeant Mountford about Miss Baccus, Miss Emily Baccus?’

  ‘Yes, Mr Dance, I’m so sorry about Miss Baccus, we —’

  ‘I have to report something ...’

  �
�Yes?’

  ‘The paper says that she was found dead ...’

  ‘That’s right sir, yes.’

  ‘... Found dead early yesterday. It says here! That’s not possible. What happened didn’t ... couldn’t have happened like that.’

  ‘Why not, sir? Do you know something about Miss Baccus’s death?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Joshua Dance. ‘Of course I know something about it. She was alive in the early hours of this morning. I saw her alive, so tell me they’ve got it wrong: the paper’s got it wrong.’

  He thought to himself that this was a typical police cock-up. Emily wouldn’t have got herself killed like that. He knew that it would be very bad luck for her to be found early on Saturday evening.

  Jack shall have Jill

  Naught shall go ill.

  The man shall have his mare again.

  And all shall be well.

  Sixteen

  ‘Normally,’ Dandy Tom said, ‘I’d have beaten all land-speed records to Camford when Jo Benton was killed. I’d have worn my seven-league boots and everything. But as you were one of the chosen few we decided to let you run with it. See how you did.’

  They sat in the Louis Quinze dining room of the Ritz, tucked away in a corner, shaded by a large feathery plant, and a little out of place in civilian clothes amidst the sea of uniforms. ‘The uniforms see civvie clothes, spot ’em a mile off and think about getting the memsahibs to hand out white feathers.’ Tommy Livermore told her. ‘They’re uncomfortable with people our age not in uniform.’

  ‘Our age? Speak for yourself, sir.’

  ‘There’s something else. As things are now, Suzie, you can get lost in a uniform: merge into the background. Think about that the next time you’re chasing a felon around the back streets of Camberwell. That’s my lip of the day.’