‘The rest of the community have to work.’
‘Yes, but many of them enjoy it. At Union Cartons there was a girl who typed invoices; a boring enough job I should have thought. She didn’t need this job, as her husband was earning easily enough for both of them. She said she worked because she liked it. She enjoyed the companionship of the office, and would have felt at a loose end if she’d stayed at home all day.’
Dyce said: ‘Look, you’re ill. You need to rest up somewhere.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘You need food, and sleep, and to smarten up your appearance to get back some self respect. If you don’t get these things, you’re going to collapse in the street and wake up in Paddington General Hospital.’
‘I’m all right.’
‘I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen it happen before. I’ve kicked around a bit and I’ve seen it happen to plenty of people. One was a girl, nice kid, but a tramp, I wouldn’t touch her.’ Dyce turned on him. ‘Is that what you want? Do you want a girl? Some fat mother type, like Georgia, who’ll take you in, and stroke your suffering brow, and feed you up, and murmur: “Poor boy, what you must have been through”?’
Beckett said impatiently: ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. You irritate me.’
‘I’m just trying to tell you how a woman would behave. She’d look after you and sympathize with you. And it would be just about the worst thing she could do.’
Beckett pressed the hooter again. He experienced, rather than merely heard, its sound. When he tried to express this experience, the only words he could summon were: It’s triumphant!’ This was inadequate, so he tried again, expressing the intensity of his inner knowledge by saying the words passionately. ‘It’s triumphant!’
‘Maybe,’ Dyce said curtly. ‘Now get this, Joe. I could give you money now, this instant. I could provide you with food and a place to stay. And if I was a false friend, if I was weak enough to act emotionally instead of having the strength to act for your good, I would give you money. But I’m not going to give you money. You’re on your own, and it’s a service to you to make you realize it. If you want money from me, you’ve got to earn it, not lie back on my charity.’
‘Yes, yes, I understand.’
‘Good. Someone like Georgia would help you, but in return you would have to become soft and sloppy, so that her mother-love could feed on your weakness. Well, I say, keep your guts. Have the guts to either starve alone, or earn money the hard way.’
Beckett got out of the car.
Dyce said through the open window: ‘Well, you know my address if you decide to take up my offer. Needless to say, I’ll give you a cash sum down if you do.’
Watching the scarlet car speed away, Beckett remembered that he had left the rose on the glove-rack. Momentarily, he felt regret. Then he returned to the waiting-room.
The next day, lying on the gentle lawn in Holland Park, he knew that Dyce was right. He must either get money or starve.
Suddenly, he had an image of his mother’s face. She turned her head and smiled. The image was very clear; he could see everything, from the way she had her hair to the flowered overall over her cardigan. For some reason, he had the impression that she was standing by the kitchen table cutting sandwiches for a picnic. There was no reason why the idea of a picnic should occur to him, and he concluded that the image was a childhood memory. He must have seen her smile in that way, wearing that overall, and cutting sandwiches. They had often had family picnics.
He thought: She shouldn’t die, she shouldn’t die! She had so much love: for God, for her family, for simple things like flowers that could make her face light up. Why should she die when she belonged to love and therefore to life?
Agonized, he thought: Why should she die? She’s so good.
The emotion made him feel physically sick. He groaned, and banged his head on the ground like a man in pain.
Chapter 14
Grosvenor Court Gardens was a block of service flats. A taxi drew up and a couple alighted. The man was corpulent, with greedy eyes and fat lips. The girl was about twenty-five, with a hard, made-up little face and pearl-coloured hair. Her black suit had a lace jabot, and a diamond brooch on the lapel.
Beckett followed them up the drive to the flats. He did not envy their wealth. He had a benevolent attitude to the wealthy, almost as if he owned them. He could, however, understand Dyce’s envy. To Dyce, the wealthy had got more counters in the game than he had, and as such were a challenge and an insult.
The revolving doors led into an entrance hall with fern-patterned panelling. Beckett joined the couple to wait for the lift.
The couple spoke only once. The man said: ‘The Van Houtens are coming at seven.’
‘I thought it was half past.’
‘No, seven.’
They got into the lift and glided silently upwards. The lift was filled with the girl’s Chanel Number Five perfume. Beckett accidentally met her eyes in the mirror; kitten-blue, outlined in black pencil.
The lift stopped at the second floor. The man waited for the girl to alight first, but she said: ‘I’m going up to Peggy’s. She borrowed my white stole.’
‘Well, don’t stay nattering to her. I want you to hand round the drinks.’
The man got out, leaving Beckett and the girl in the lift. Without looking at her, he reached his hands towards her.
Her hand came to meet his, and they gripped. The next moment she was in his arms, with her pearl-coloured hair resting against his shoulder. They held each other close, as if to comfort and protect. Then she raised her small, expensive face to be kissed.
When the lift stopped and the automatic doors opened, she said: ‘This is my floor,’ and got out.
Beckett took the lift down again to the third floor. Flat 34 was at the end of the corridor. He rang the bell, and heard the double chime sound within.
Dyce opened the door almost immediately. ‘Well, here you are, old boy. Come in.’
The living-room had smart modern furniture. The effect was impersonal, like a hotel room. The suite was bi-coloured in lime-green and grey. Radiogram, cocktail cabinet, television, and a pile of American magazines completed the décor. There was central heating, and wall lights with fan-shaped shades.
‘Make yourself at home,’ Dyce said. He moved like a combatant, easy and relaxed, but with preparedness always there like a hand resting lightly on a holster. Beckett had noticed this before. Dyce, entering a place, would scan it swiftly, in the manner of one long practised in coolly assessing vantage, danger, and cover, before issuing the command. Now Dyce was moving around the room, mixing drinks, and lowering the volume of the television. On the screen a troupe of girls in spangles and top hats were doing a dance routine. Then he took Beckett into the bedroom to show him the ultraviolet-ray lamp. ‘My latest gadget. Ultraviolet rays and exercise. That’s the way to keep fit. A man gets soft and sloppy in easy living conditions like these, if he doesn’t discipline himself to keep in tip-top form. Look at the other men in these flats. Fat and flabby. All the exercise they get is lifting phones and getting into taxis. Ugh. They can’t even love their mistresses without taking vitalizing pills.’
They returned to the living-room. Dyce began to boast of his recent sexual conquests. Then he went on to talk of the flats, ‘The front flats are the classiest, but the back are most popular because they have fire escapes.’ He explained, in case Beckett had missed the point: ‘I never met so many crooks as I have since I moved in here. They all run rackets. One type owns four houses which he lets to call-girls. Exorbitant rents, of course. No wonder he likes to have a fire-escape handy.’ The tone of his boasting turned back to sex again. ‘I’ve got this deb, the Hon. Pamela Watson-Stott. Daddy and Mummy have a town flat, and a house in Hampshire. They don’t know about me yet, but Pam is taking me down to meet them one weekend. Have to go carefully with these deb types, though. One moment they worship you; the next they go all high horse and treat you like a serf.
’ He added: ‘Not me, though. She tried treating me like a serf once and I slapped her haughty, vacant face.’
Beckett exclaimed wildly: ‘Will you come to the point? I’m here because we’re planning a murder, aren’t I?’
Dyce leaned forward in his armchair, his hands on his knees, the flicker flames of excitement like careful madness in his eyes. Neither man spoke.
Then Dyce got up, switched on the anglepoise reading light on the desk, and arranged some papers round it. ‘Take a look at these.’
When Beckett stood up he realized that the drinks had affected him faster than usual, because of the Thyrodine and lack of food.
‘This is a map of Sealing, the country town where my aunt lives. Here is Upper Lane, on the outskirts of the town. Her house, Woodstock, is on the exact spot here...’ Dyce marked an X.
Because of the central heating, the atmosphere had a hard, dry heat. Cigarette-smoke curled in the light of the anglepoise. Beckett felt as if he were suspended in space. He tried to understand the map, but could see only the shape of the paper, which made a wall against understanding. He shut his eyes for a moment, and wrenched his mind into working order.
Dyce was now displaying a sketch plan of the house, and explaining that this back door had a glass pane missing, and that this was the room where the deaf companion slept. His voice was tense with excitement. His hand, holding the cigarette, stabbed repeatedly at the plan. ‘You will be absolutely safe. There will be nothing to connect you with the crime. And as for me, I shall be weekending in Hampshire, with Pamela’s family, with people to vouch for my presence there all the time.’ He winked. ‘Even in bed. Pamela said she’d get me the room next to hers.’
Dyce then proceeded to explain the whole plan in detail. He said that he had often stayed up the entire night, pacing round the flat, sweating with fever and concentration as he had worked out the minutest details of his project. He now made Beckett repeat those details until both of them had everything firmly fixed in their minds. Beckett was accurate and quick on the uptake; his mind raced in pace with Dyce’s.
They bent over the sketch again. Dyce went on talking, lighting fresh cigarettes and rapping them on the cigarette-case before lighting them. He had removed his jacket and wore rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened tie. Behind the blue haze of smoke he looked like the dealer in a poker game.
Beckett understood and anticipated everything that Dyce said. Simultaneously, he had a brilliant image of Dyce as he was at that moment, with his features decisive like a Red Indian’s. The hard glare of the light showed the place where his hair was thinning and the dark circles of sweat on the underarms of his nylon shirt.
Still talking, Dyce crossed to the drink cabinet. ‘It doesn’t matter that we have been seen together. Because a man’s aunt dies, there is no reason to suspect his every acquaintance.’
‘What about Jacko? He is a link between us and might talk.’
‘Not he. Every man has his price, and Jacko’s is low. He can be bought with money and with the sort of tolerance a man gives to a dog who follows him up the street,’ Dyce said, grinning into the mirror over the cabinet. Then he spun round. He was pointing a service revolver at Beckett’s stomach. ‘Don’t move.’
Beckett did not move.
‘Have you ever seen a man die with a bullet in his guts?’
‘No.’
‘Would you like to have one in yours?’
The essential was to keep calm. Beckett said easily: ‘Naturally not.’
Dyce released the safety-catch. ‘Why don’t you take it from me? I won’t stop you. Just walk towards me and take it.’
Beckett still did not move.
‘It isn’t loaded.’
‘Isn’t it?’
‘That is what you don’t know,’ Dyce said. ‘I tell you it isn’t, but I might be lying. Why don’t you walk towards me and take it?’
‘All right.’ Beckett started to walk. He thought: So this is what fear is. When he reached Dyce, he touched his hand lightly and Dyce gave him the revolver without demur.
Then Dyce exploded into his exuberant, manic laughter.
The revolver was loaded all right. Beckett raised it, aimed at the window, and would have fired had not Dyce interposed, seizing his wrist. They struggled briefly and the revolver fell on the cushion of a chair.
They did not pick it up, but stood glaring at each other without speaking.
Then Dyce said: ‘Stop it! What do you want to do? Bring everybody running to find out what the noise was? Is that what you want?’
‘I want some fresh air.’
‘Are you drunk?’ Dyce peered at him. ‘No, you are ill. You look terribly ill.’
‘I am neither drunk nor ill.’
‘Tell you what, we’ll go out on the balcony for a bit. Wait while I stow the papers away.’
Beckett forced himself to keep control. After a few seconds it was all right. He picked up the revolver, and replaced the catch. Then he put it in his pocket and kept his fist tightly round it.
The balcony was reached through the kitchen. Sitting on one of the canvas chairs, Beckett had to admit that Dyce was justifiably proud of his balcony. The cool air was like a balm, an invisible hand on his forehead. Summer blessing, driven from the streets, lived in the leafy trees behind Grosvenor Court Gardens. He thought that if he owned this flat, he would sit out here in the evenings and look at the trees and at the distant road with its necklace of lights.
Dyce said: ‘That business of mine, when I was fooling around. I could say that I was doing it to test your nerve, but it wouldn’t be true. I’m a bit of a bloody sadist….’ He sounded as if he was going to continue, but instead fell silent.
Beckett said inconsequentially: ‘This is a very pleasant place.’
‘The Army ruined me for civilian life, you know. Oh, I know thousands of others were in the same position, having to settle down to a boring routine. And it didn’t seem to affect them, they settled down all right. I happened to be one of the unlucky ones. I can’t settle. Sometimes I wish there would be another war. I’d enlist like a shot.’
‘The next war will be a nuclear war.’
‘Yes, I know. No soldiers, just some official or other pushing a button. That is why I support nuclear disarmament. Not because I’m a pale-faced pacifist, but because I don’t want a war that has no place for me in it.’
Beckett suddenly liked Dyce, forgetting his irritation at Dyce’s old-boy mannerisms. He understood Dyce’s recklessness and thirst for life. Ilsa also had this thirst for life, which was also a desire for annihilation. Ilsa danced and drank and shouted and told lies in order that she should not think and face her own vacuum. Ilsa lived with Katey because she could not stand being alone for five minutes. He said: ‘You remind me a bit of Ilsa.’
‘You don’t understand. No bloody female’s psychology is anything like mine.’
‘All right, it was only a thought.’
Dyce said: ‘I still remember the first man I killed. I was surprised. I fired and he fell down. I hadn’t expected him to fall down, and I was surprised.’
The garage block was below their balcony. Beckett watched a car being driven out. It was a deluxe American model, with shark fins and green windows like an aquarium. ‘I can’t imagine having enough money to own a car like that.’ He got up and went into the kitchen, where he poured out a glass of water.
Dyce followed him in. ‘We will have enough money, though, if all goes well, as it must do. I think of money a lot. All those notes, in wage packets, over counters, wagered on tracks, starting businesses, buying shares, making million-pound deals, influencing everything from sex to religion and politics. Small amounts made from selling goods or services, large amounts made pure, I mean money made from money. I was brought up in a slum. I didn’t have this public-school accent all my life. As a kid I spoke Cockney. But I didn’t hate the rich. On the contrary I was glad they existed. My ambitions and interest weren’t aroused by the Welfare State, and “
fair shares for the workers” kind of crap. It was the rich who aroused my ambition, and that’s why I was glad they existed. Your pal Wainwright enrages me. Middle-class bloody novelist. What right has he to be a socialist? He thinks that all workers want to abolish capitalism. Well, I was working class, and I didn’t want to abolish capitalism, I wanted to be one of the capitalists.’
Something in Beckett reached fever pitch. He strode through the flat, talking at a fast pace, accompanying his words with chopping gestures with his right hand. ‘When I lost my belief in God, the balance of my life changed. Before, life was weighted down by the prospect of eternity. Now the weight is removed and life flies upwards as free and shortlived as a balloon. Of course many men, if they don’t believe in God believe in society instead, which amounts to much the same thing, as religious laws are generally only sensible social safeguards. So if he is a good member of society, he will continue to act in a moral manner. But that depends on his regarding society as a mutual help co-operative system. He may, on the other hand, regard it as a grabbing contest, and a survey of history and politics and business and crime will strengthen this view. In this case, he is free not only because he disbelieves the God myth, but because he is also sceptical of the social myth.’ Beckett leapt in the air. ‘For the duration of his short life he is completely free to do as he likes.’
‘You’re quite right,’ Dyce said. Then he enquired: ‘Are you on benze?’
‘No,’ Beckett said, wiping his damp forehead.
‘Well you look ill, and you act like a madman.’
‘I’m all right.’
When he left Grosvenor Court Gardens his fists were in his pockets, one holding the gun, the other clutching a wad of fifty pounds in notes. He felt an almost unbearable excitement, as if he was the electric circuit between the two objects.
His left hand caressed the notes in their elastic band. They were crisp and new, which added to his pleasure in them. This intense excitement could only be caused by ill-gotten notes; he had never experienced it with the earned money in his pay packets. He imagined that thieves and prostitutes must also feel this excitement from handling the money they gained.
The Furnished Room Page 19