‘Are you mad?’ He asked the question seriously, wondering why she was talking in the midst of everything about the Garden of Gethsemane. ‘I will speak to your superiors. You are unfit to be out.’
‘There is nothing whatsoever the matter with me–’
‘You are quarrelsome in drink. You are making terrible accusations, based on no facts at all. You are turning against your friends–’
‘What friends?’
‘Your partner and friend. You know who I mean. We have a shared interest in this house. You are trying to do me out of my rights. Well, we’ll see about that.’
‘I am becoming impatient, Studdy. I have given you a chance and told you what I know so that you can do a midnight flit. Take it or leave it.’
Studdy reached for the cigarette he had placed on his ear. He lit it and blew smoke in her direction.
‘I asked you–’ She stopped, knowing that he no longer had a reason to be-agreeable to her.
‘You’re a right bitch,’ said Studdy.
‘Mind that language, please–’
‘I’ll mind what I like, missus.’
‘Let’s talk this over sensibly. No need to get our rags out. Leave The Boarding-House and you’ll not hear another thing. I have certain influence with the police.’
‘Is that so?’ Studdy spoke scornfully. He began to roll another cigarette. ‘Have a fag, missus?’ he said, and Nurse Clock ignored the offer.
‘I have influence with Mrs le Tor. Mrs le Tor might bring no action if I spoke to her in a certain way.
‘Who is Mrs Tor?’
‘It is useless talking to you. I see that things must take their course. Well, I am sorry it is so. A man cut down in his prime.’
‘You are telling lies to the police and have a network of women to back you up. I’ll deny it all.’ But he knew that Nurse Clock held all the trump cards. He knew that what she required of him he must do. She looked like a great plump spider, he thought, and he wished he had a pin so that he could reach out and stick into her, all over her body, until in an hour or so she died.
‘Have it your own way,’ said Nurse Clock. ‘It costs you nothing to think what you like, old boy. But I’ll tell you this: there is justice still in England, and the extraction of money from helpless women is not the most popular of crimes.’
An idea, born of desperation, formed in Studdy’s brain. The light was failing but he could see her still, looking like a spider whose legs have been forgotten, with the easy smile on her broad face and her hair neat upon her head and her shoulders thick and fat.
Studdy stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his shoe. ‘It’s good of you to tell me,’ he said. ‘I wonder why you told me that now, and didn’t let events take their course.’
‘I am not an ungenerous woman.’ He saw in the gloom her mouth producing these words, the flash of her even, artificial teeth, her lips settling into place. She smiled agreeably, as once she had taught herself.
‘I think you are not,’ said Studdy.
She was surprised to hear this. She said nothing for a moment, waiting to hear more. But Studdy did not speak either and after a minute she said:
‘Well then?’
‘To tell the truth,’ said Studdy, ‘I fancy you.’
Nurse Clock was unused to this form of words and did not at first understand it. Then, more by intuition than anything else, it came to her that Studdy was paying her court.
‘I thought we got on together,’ he said. ‘I thought we were away for ourselves.’
‘What are you saying?’ cried Nurse Clock, as Studdy’s meaning became clearer, and then perfectly clear. ‘For goodness’ sake, Mr Studdy.’
‘I would have said it before, only I never had the nerve.’
‘Said what, Mr Studdy? You’ve said nothing so far.’
‘What about it. Nurse? You and me. Would you see yourself as Mrs Studdy?’
Nurse Clock contained herself no longer. She jerked her head upwards and to the left in a diagonal movement, and she snorted loudly with laughter. Peal after peal issued from the gaping mouth of Nurse Clock, and so great was the noise that they heard it in the television lounge through a comedy programme. The rise and fall of Nurse Clock’s laughter was heard that night by passers-by in Jubilee Road and several remarked that here was someone in hysteria.
Studdy sat and watched the woman writhing and hooting opposite him. Her limbs contorted in her merriment, her head twitched and rolled. The tone of her laughter altered, like the sound of a vehicle changing gear: the notes were high and then dropped to a deep resonance. Nurse Clock was giving the performance of a prima donna, and she was well aware of it.
Studdy was thinking that the creature was an animal; he was saying to himself that it was surely in error that she had become a member of the human race.
‘You are a goat, a fowl, a farmyard pest. You are a species of ape, a hard-backed rhino, a mad hyena. Yes, I think you are that: a mad hyena.’
Through her laughter Nurse Clock was aware of Studdy’s invective» and of the animal names he was listing so effortlessly.
‘You have the hide of an elephant and the heart of a toad. You are a snake in the grass. You are a treacherous possum. Do you know what a possum is, missus? Yes, I think you are a possum.’
‘Mrs Studdy! ‘cried Nurse Clock. ‘Oh, God in glory, what a thing to think!’
Her laughter began again and Studdy sat without moving. If he had a garden shears, he thought, he would open them wide and fix the blades about her neck. He would tighten the handles slowly, bringing each handle towards the other. Blood would spatter the walls of this clinical room and a head with teeth still bared would pop like a cork and strike the ceiling.
‘Wait till the others have heard that,’ said Nurse Clock. She wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. She blew her nose. Her body heaved and she belched again with laughter.
Studdy saw the severed head strike the ceiling and drop to the ground, its spectacles caught about its ears, still poised on its nose. He looked and saw the trunk of Nurse Clock’s body sagging in her chair, dark blood spurting as from a fountain. Blood flowed over her nurse’s uniform and somehow touched his hands: he felt it between his fingers, warm and slippery.
‘You are the ugliest, most repulsive thing in the whole range of God’s creation.’
Nurse Clock shook her head, unable to reply, implying not a denial but a touch of scorn for Studdy’s pronouncement.
‘I think God did not make you at all. I think He said to Himself: “I cannot make the like of this,” so He gave the job to some cheapjack conjurer who was passing outside.’
‘You’ll be the death of me,’ cried Nurse Clock, and Studdy, who wished above all things to be that, opened his mouth and spat at her.
Mr Obd, alone in his room, heard the roaring laughter of Nurse Clock and leant an ear to it, for he associated it with Mr Bird. ‘There is surely somebody else gone mad,’ said Mr Obd to himself. ‘The vile Bird is driving us all round the bend with his mockery.’
He rose and left his room, treading softly because he was anxious not to call undue attention to himself. He descended the stairs, slipping as he went a fire-lighter behind each of the three Watts reproductions. He put a couple in the drawer of the hallstand, beside three packets of seeds and the tennis balls that had been there since 1912.
In the television lounge Rose Cave was thinking that she could never accept a position from Nurse Clock, since Nurse Clock, it seemed, was guilty of something shady. She would not have minded looking after the needs of the elderly, helping to run a home, but she could not, ever, do that with Nurse Clock. ‘But I could do it, or something like it, in a place that was established and run on proper lines,’ she said to herself. ‘I could look around and find a decent job, however menial – and perhaps it would be at first, for I have no training.’ And she thought that it would all be more interesting than the work she had done for so long, which bored her so much. She would tell Nurse Clock that she wou
ld not be happy to work in the way that she had suggested; yet she did not feel as resentful as she had towards Nurse Clock, for it seemed that Nurse Clock in her shadiness had put a useful thought into her head.
By now Major Eele had become used to the idea of leaving The Boarding-House. He would find, he knew, some other place in the same area, or at least not much farther out, so that he might make the journey to the West End on foot. The girl from the north of England had left the Ti-Ti Club and a buxom West Indian had taken her place. He felt happier about that.
Earlier that evening Venables had found a room. It was not a room in a boarding-house but one with a family who happened to have somewhere to spare and felt the need of the money. ‘You will be quite snug here,’ the woman had said to him. ‘We will treat you as one of ourselves.’ He said the room looked very nice, and in fact, in a way, it did, although it was smaller than his at The Boarding-House. ‘Weetabix for breakfast,’ the woman had said. ‘High tea in the evenings. Rent in advance, dear.’
In his room Mr Scribbin heard Class A4 Pacific 60014 hissing quietly in Grantham station, about to begin the famous climb to Stoke summit. When the record came to an end he had decided on a plan of action. He opened the door of his room. He could hear Nurse Clock laughing. He looked over the banisters and saw in the hall below Mr Obd distributing rectangular objects behind pictures and in drawers. Otherwise The Boarding-House was quiet and without obvious activity. It took Mr Scribbin twenty minutes to move his belongings, including his gramophone, his mattress and his bedding, to the attic room that had once been Mr Bird’s. Mr Scribbin thought of himself as a quiet man who had never in all his life given anyone any trouble, but he was not going to have his records broken and he did not intend to go and live with a desk sergeant just because Nurse Clock wished him tor He locked the door of Mr Bird’s attic room and set the place to rights, stacking his remaining records in a cupboard.
Five or six years ago, one damp Saturday afternoon. Miss Clerricot had bought two bottles of aspirin tablets. She had read more than once that it was a simple thing to swallow too many aspirins: one fell into a sleep and did not wake up. Whenever she became tired of hoping that the ground would open beneath her, Miss Clerricot sat alone with her aspirins, looking at them, five hundred and six of them, and thinking about the embarrassment of life. She looked at them now, on the night that Nurse Clock laughed and Mr Scribbin moved his belongings, but she knew that she would never now do the simple thing she had once intended. The aspirins had become an ornament in her room, the reminder of a bad moment, and a source of small comfort. Because in her final analysis she was glad that they were there and she was glad that she was there to see them.
25
On the morning of September 23rd the members of The Boarding-House went about their duties in a way that was now familiar to them.
Rose Cave left the house at eight thirty-two. She bought a newspaper on the way to the bus-stop and read it while she waited and again when she had taken her seat.
Mr Scribbin left later and locked the door of the attic room behind him and told nobody what he had done in the night. He resolved to replace the broken records in his lunch-hour, and as he walked down Jubilee Road he looked forward to that.
Little Miss Clerricot went to work for Mr Morgan and dreaded meeting Mr Sellwood. She would blush in an awkward way if she met Mr Sellwood, wondering how much he had told his wife about her behaviour in Leeds, wondering if he knew that his wife had been on to The Boarding-House, wishing to speak to her. For a moment it seemed odd to her that Mrs Sellwood had not telephoned her at the office, where she must know she worked, but she dismissed this stray thought, assuming that Mrs Sellwood had her own reasons for what she did.
Venables arrived late at his place of work and found the punctuality man filing his finger-nails, waiting for him.
‘You are late, Venables,’ said the punctuality man. ‘You realize, do you, you are consistently late in the a.m.?’
Venables stood by the door of the big general office where he worked, in his navy blue blazer and flannel trousers without a crease. He saw the punctuality man looking again at the dandruff on his shoulders. The man’s glance shifted. The glance surveyed Venables’ face, moving over his cheeks and nose, up to his pale forehead. Years ago this man had taken it into his head that Venables was a Jew and, disliking Jews, had made a point of taking Venables regularly to task. Another employee, later than Venables, entered the general office. ‘Good morning,’ said the punctuality man.
‘The services are unreliable,’ Venables began.
‘Services?’ said the punctuality man.
‘I came in by bus and Tube.’
‘How you come in, Venables, is not of interest to us here. Why should we worry how you travel? The fact is you are always late.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I suspect malingering. The management is watching you. I tell you that as a favour.’
Pursuit had featured grimly in Venables’ life to date, and to Venables now, as he stood by the door of the general office, it seemed that pursuit would continue to feature in the future. His father, now safe with the Seventh Day Adventists in Wales, was no longer interested in pursuing his son, banging on the lavatory door and threatening attentions with a razor strop. But the Flatrups had said that they would never give up, that they would seek him until they found him, that some day somewhere they would run him to earth and wreak their vengeance, because the body of Miss Flatrup was ruined for ever by a bargain abortion.
‘I am changing my residence,’ said Venables. ‘That may make things easier.’
‘Who cares?’ remarked the punctuality man, and he walked away, talking about Jews.
Studdy and Nurse Clock were not on speaking terms. Nurse Clock saw him in the dining-room holding his knife and fork in the air poised high above a plate of eggs. He had a habit which displeased her greatly: that of saluting people with his knife as they entered or left the room.
Studdy was thinking about a man who often came into the public house and was reputed to be a solicitor, or to have at least some connexion with the machinery of the law. He had resolved in the night to approach this person and to put his case to him, explaining the attack launched on him recently by Nurse Clock. He assured himself that he was not the man to take such things lying down, yet he knew, after thinking about the matter, that his first reading of the situation had been correct: Nurse Clock held all the trumps. It was just that there might be some danger he could inflict before agreeing to move away, or some clever way in which hè could extract money from her.
‘Look at this,’ said Gallelty in the kitchen. ‘Here’s a firelighter in with the laundry.’
Major Eele, avoiding the Jasmine Café, strolled along a back street. He was en route for the shop, run by a Mrs Rolfer, where he sold his back numbers of Urge. He passed down a street he had passed down before, a street in which children seemed always to be on the point of death, playing on the pavement and straying in their play on to the road. There were greengrocers’ shops, and shops that sold hardware and selected groceries side by side. Men stood outside betting centres, reading the racing columns or discussing form.
‘Well, dear?’ said Mrs Rolfer, an occasional patient of Nurse Clock’s, though Major Eele did not know it.
‘Another half dozen,’ he said, and drew the volumes from an inner pocket.
‘One and six,’ said Mrs Rolfer, stating the figure with firmness. She did not present it as an offer, as something he might decide he could not accept: people rarely bargained with Mrs Rolfer.
‘Nice day,’ said Major Eele. ‘How’s your back?’
‘Sick,’ said Mrs Rolfer, and Major Eele pulled a suitable face.
He walked on, wondering what to do. A child ran beneath his legs, a black and red ball struck him on the knee. He sighed, and thought suddenly that he might walk into London. There was a Lyons café on the way where he could obtain a midday meal by queuing up with a tray. ‘Good idea,’ s
aid Major Eele, increasing his speed.
‘Hullo there,’ cried a voice, and he beheld on the other side of this difficult street the person of Mr Obd leaving a hardware store with a parcel held proudly in his arms.
‘Narrow gauge on the Costa Brava,’ said one assistant to another. ‘God knows what that is.’
‘A recording of trains,’ said Mr Scribbin. ‘I got it here before.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said the second assistant.
Miss Clerricot bought sandwiches for lunch and ate them in a park. She had not seen Mr Sellwood that morning. Mr Morgan had been brusque. She opened the early edition of the evening paper, looking at advertised accommodation.
‘I know you people make a thing of food,’ said the punctuality man. ‘Remember the management is interested. Cut it short now.’
‘What people?’ asked Venables.
The punctuality man laughed, thinking that was typical.
Rose Cave ate shepherd’s pie and apricots with cream. She wondered what she should do to further her plan of working in an institution for the elderly. ‘Your mind is not with us today,’ someone had earlier said, laughing over it, for Rose Cave’s mind was nearly always where it should be. She thought she should go to a public library and look through advertisements for such positions. Hastily she paid her bill, excited by the idea of going at once to a public library.
‘We must get this straight,’ said Nurse Clock, meeting Studdy in the hall.
‘What do you want?’
‘We have a matter to discuss. We began a discussion and then you took it into your head to behave like an animal.’
Studdy sniffed. ‘You have got it wrong. It was you–’
‘You took it into your head to expectorate, Mr Studdy. Well, never mind. When may we expect to lose you?’
‘Not at all,’ said Studdy. ‘I think I will stay on a bit. Don’t try anything on now.’
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