He found it hard to say what was on his mind; what had been on his mind since he left the little private ward. Then he began, ‘It doesn’t seem that a man would go to those lengths without provocation,’ and Angel cut in. He did not raise his voice but replied in the same swift smooth even tone, ‘Why, isn’t that a nice thing to say about your daughter? But it doesn’t apply to my wife.’
There was a pause. The doctor thought, I hate him, of course.
‘I don’t know,’ Tom Shaw joined in. ‘It’s never too good a thing to take the law in your own hands.’
‘This isn’t the law. This is private,’ Dunn said. ‘This is Mike’s wife.’
‘Right,’ Mike replied. And now his suppressed anger seemed to collect itself. Bob, over by the bar, broke the awkward silence.
‘Two flasks?’
‘Right,’ Angel said. Angel didn’t carry his own cigarettes. He affected not to smoke. He grinned when he reached to a pack belonging to one of his friends. He turned back.
‘So don’t worry,’ he told the doctor. ‘I’m fortunate in my friends.’
The doctor was thinking, No wonder I went into that cinema, I must have known it was going to work out like this. The ice was clinking against the side of his glass.
He said, ‘Is it the best idea to take the law into your own hands?’
Angel said, ‘He’ll have his say.’
Tom Shaw added, ‘That’s the whole point.’
‘And if he’s found guilty?’ the doctor asked. ‘If you find him guilty?’
Nobody answered.
Somebody said, ‘We don’t need three cars, do we?’ He was answered ‘No, God no, two’s enough.’
The doctor thought how strange it was that a certain type of rich man often believed that fathers had been castrated. He wondered if it was his profession, his income or merely his age that led them so brightly to this insulting assumption. He finished his vodka and very gently asked the question, ‘Do I take it that we are leaving at five?’
In putting it that way, he was being less than true to himself. He was answering Angel and his friends in their own terms. He knew that. Almost as he said it he asked himself, Why on earth should I have done that? How inconsistent we are.
‘Good for the Doc,’ one of them said generously, thereby applauding him for having made the worst decision of his life.
Angel now mentioned a downtown address. He said, ‘That is the apartment where this perverted gentleman lives.’
They were all watching the doctor as the news sank in.
‘That’s in the Negro quarter,’ he said, at last.
‘Does that alter the principle?’ Angel asked. The doctor kept staring at his own shoes. ‘Does it?’ Angel said.
It didn’t. Perfectly true. It changed things but it didn’t alter the principle. Say nothing, doctor, if you have nothing relevant to say.
Shaw tried to help again. ‘It’s simply a matter of going down there and extracting the man. He’ll have his say. We can hear what he says.’ Somebody else agreed, ‘It’s as simple as that.’
Angel stood up and finished his drink. It was one minute to five. The porter came in to tell him that the boy had brought his car to the door.
‘Thank you, John,’ Angel said. He led the way.
The doctor thought, I ought to go at once and call the police.
Angel’s car was a Rolls, of course: the newest in navy blue. The advertisement used to say that when a Rolls was travelling a mile each minute the only sound to be heard was the ticking of the clock – and the makers were seeing to that. Heavy clods of snow thudded against the mud-guards because the city snow ploughs hadn’t yet cleared the downtown lakeside highway. The temperature wasn’t far below zero, but it had been cold for a week. The lake itself was frozen and the wind was still blowing across it from east of north. It threw the snow up in gusts which covered the windscreen. The lights on the dashboard shone brightly now. It was growing dark. The doctor felt cold and lonely, crouched in the back of that fast car.
Why had he said, ‘Do I take it that we are leaving at five?’ He liked to think it was the sight of Lilian in that little private ward which had led him into this but he knew that to be a lie. He supposed three vodkas had helped. Angel’s quip had stung him, too. But in the end, he wondered, wasn’t it just a vanity, a daring-do resulting from his own sense of inadequacy in that damnable atmosphere with the red linoleum, the signet rings and gold watches, the dark suits and the polished London brogues? He sat thinking these things in the car. Sat thinking, If we are true to ourselves are we ever satisfied that we are men? And if I were a simple man, I should be proud. I always used to see movies about the little men fighting back. Here I am with a son and a son-in-law both brave boys and they’re not going to let anybody hurt my daughter. I should be happy. Junior must love his sister very much to do this for her.
But the doctor wasn’t a simple man. He didn’t behave like the plucky Jewish immigrant. He didn’t really have to; not where he practised. Besides, he couldn’t quite believe that the boys were reacting from love of Lilian.
Angel said, ‘You know he worked at the Mission? This mission to which Lilian came twice a week? It’s a friendship mission. A human rights organisation. The war on poverty, right down here, somewhere. This bastard worked alongside her for quite a few weeks. Then, pow.’
‘That’s nothing to do with colour, Mike, not a thing like that. And you can’t let it be, not whatever Lilian said, you know that.’ The blond boy, Dunn, seemed to be some kind of personal assistant to Angel: he drove. Angel sat in the front beside him. In the back were Shaw, the doctor in the middle, and another younger man called Cross who was the top athlete in the group. The others followed in a big steely Buick sedan.
Apart from the clock and the thud of the snow there was soon another intermittent noise. Shaw kept talking. Shortly, the doctor began to work out why. Shaw was either more cowardly or more imaginative than the rest. He was talking compulsively. To begin with, he spoke about the weather. He went on to talk of the misery of the district into which they now penetrated. They passed from the wide freeway into a kind of temporary shanty town, then into the slums themselves.
‘Right,’ Dunn said, at the end of Shaw’s long dissertation on the sad history of the place, and when the commentary was about to continue Angel told Cross, ‘Give him a swig.’ Cross had the thermos flask filled with the icy club’s blood.
The doctor still kept absolutely quiet. When Shaw had swigged, he passed the flask forward to Angel who did not then forget his manners. He turned back.
‘Doc?’ he invited. ‘It’s the best Bloody Mary in the world.’
The doctor accepted the flask. He, too, took a swig then passed it forward again to his son-in-law.
Once more, Shaw began to talk. This time he seemed determined to persuade the doctor that their actions were justified. Meantime Dunn, the driver, took a drink. Angel was not a drinking man. He had sunk three or four at the club which was more than he had done for the past month. His face was a little paler than usual, his eyes brighter. He was breathing deeply as if he were trying to restrain himself.
The district maybe looked better in the snow which covered the garbage and jetsam on the sidewalks, and the bricks and bottles and old iron on the road. I’m scared of these streets, I mustn’t open my mouth, the doctor thought.
Shaw began again.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Cross said.
Shaw said, ‘I’m telling the doctor, he doesn’t know it all. This bastard must have been plotting the assault the whole time … And he’d seemed a nice young man.’
‘Okay,’ Angel said, trying gently to shut him up. But it isn’t possible to silence a man gently when his nerve begins to go.
In the front, Dunn gave a groan. He yelled at Shaw to shut up. Angel chuckled.
About then, they slowed down. Angel and Dunn peered ahead through the snow which was blown in strange patterns by the wind. They found it hard to read the
street signs. Then, passing a crossing, Dunn swore at himself. They had overshot the turning. Dunn swung the Rolls round into the middle of the avenue and turned about. Somebody hooted and swerved by in an old Mustang. He was yelling. He was black. Angel was very calm. He read out the number of the street.
Angel seemed to be changing one part of the plan, because he no longer trusted Tom Shaw. He told the driver, ‘You come up with me, Bill. Tom, you stay with the car.’
Shaw at once understood the implication and began to protest. But Angel, stepping out on to the sidewalk and buttoning his black coat with the velvet collar, had authority. He did not raise his voice as he said again, ‘Tom, you stay with the car.’ Angel moved off towards the Buick.
Cross and the doctor had now scrambled out. They stood in the roadway, waiting for Angel. How very ugly it all is, the doctor thought. Dunn climbed out, but before he could close the door Angel turned back and restrained him, reached in and took the ignition key. Poor Shaw was too busy scrambling from the back to the front to observe this cut-off to possible flight: it isn’t easy to start a Rolls without a key.
The snow helped. If it hadn’t been for the snow the streets would have been crowded, but now there was nobody, except just inside the tenement door. There were some children there, staring out. Their legs looked very thin and black. One had on a navy blue anorak.
As Angel said, ‘This way, gentlemen,’ and led on with his gloved fingers tucked lightly into his coat pockets, the doctor wondered if he were armed. He hoped not: then glancing back and seeing coloured men emerging on to the sidewalk, he thought, I’m damned if I’ll hope so.
The apartment was on the second floor, Number 217. The building was only six stories high. The snow didn’t seem so thick. Perhaps the high building opposite protected the house from the wind. But some snow had drifted on to the balconies and lay against the windows and doors.
The doctor didn’t know the plan of action, but it was obvious to him that everything had been worked out, beforehand. The Buick was strictly in reserve. No one had climbed out of it. The doctor thought, I shouldn’t be here.
There was no need to ring or knock. The occupants of Number 217 were already on the balcony. There was an old man, a middle-aged woman, a girl about sixteen and a younger boy. Angel said, ‘Good evening, Mr Clarke,’ and walked straight into the apartment, with Cross on his heels. Protesting only mildly, the old man and his family followed him in. The doctor and Dunn brought up the rear.
Angel and Cross and the family moved straight into the living-room. Dunn locked the front door and then stepped into the kitchen which overlooked the balcony and also the road and the Rolls below. He switched off the lights and took up a position in which he could see outwards and downwards at an acute angle. He sat on a cheap, maybe home-made cupboard to do this.
The doctor walked through to the living-room where Angel and Cross had already started work. Like all plans, this one had already gone awry: there was no sign of the villain. Meantime Cross upturned the beds and opened every cupboard door. Pulling back a curtain he tore it off the rail.
The doctor was almost sure that there was about to be violence. It is the sins of omission, he thought, which we always live to regret. Of course I should have rung the police. Simultaneously, he observed the situation. It was fairly obvious that these were the parents and brother and sister of the boy who had assaulted Lilian. The next step would seem to be for Cross to twist the old man’s arm and ask for the son’s whereabouts. The Negro family stood almost in an exact line. They seemed to lack spirit. Their expressions were sorrowful rather than indignant. They did not look so frightened. It was as if they had expected the visit and in a sad sort of way were glad their time had come.
The doctor was therefore warning his son-in-law when he said, ‘We can’t bear the responsibility for our children all their lives. It isn’t Mr Clarke’s fault any more.’
But the doctor again underestimated Angel, who had style.
‘What is your girl’s name?’ Angel asked the father.
The girl herself answered ‘Christina.’
Angel didn’t turn to her. He never took his eyes off the old man who was lean and creased and not very big; with a mouth that hung open.
Angel said, ‘My wife, whose father, Dr Ewing, is standing there by the door, is not very much older than Christina. If I had promised to run her home, attempted and failed to seduce her, attempted and failed to rape her, then driven her to a dark place, removed her from the automobile and urinated on her, I do not imagine that you would have left the matter there.’
The mother said, ‘Rex’d never done that.’
‘Rex did,’ Angel answered briefly.
‘Not without reason, he wouldn’t of,’ the old man said, and Angel turned sharply away, in anger.
‘Where is he?’ Cross asked, woodenly.
‘He’s gone.’
‘Gone where?’ Cross asked.
‘Don’t say where he’s going.’
Angel had recovered himself. He said, ‘Why should he have disappeared if he weren’t guilty?’
‘’Cos he know he won’t get a fair shake-out, that’s exactly why,’ the old man said. At that point, just when the doctor was beginning to feel that things maybe weren’t going to work out quite so badly as he had anticipated, there was a surge of noise outside and from the kitchen Dunn shouted, ‘Angel. Here.’
Angel didn’t run. The doctor followed. They looked out.
In the space of less than half a minute there was to be total bloody confusion in which men would die. Possibly, if it hadn’t started in the street, Angel and Cross would have soon used violence against the family and fused an explosion, anyway; but that’s not how it happened.
Ironically, the trouble stemmed from the traffic misdemeanour: the prohibited U-turn. The men in the car that had skidded to a stop were belligerent and not quite sober. Maybe their club too had blood. Whatever, they had enough liquor in them to persevere. They followed in the Buick’s track: then parked behind it.
Now, joined by a dozen other Negroes who had appeared on the sidewalk, they were shouting and rocking the Buick. The noise they made brought everybody on to the street. As Angel and the doctor watched, the car was overturned, with its occupants trapped inside.
There were screams and shouts. Then a shot was fired. Shaw had found the gun that Angel always kept in the pocket of the Rolls. He fired back towards the group round the Buick: fired wildly, but winged one man. He leapt back into the car only to find that the key wasn’t there. His fingers fumbled up and down the dashboard. With a little yelp of fear, he jumped out into the road again and backed away. Frightened by the growing crowd he fired several more shots, but above their heads. He then took to his heels and ran.
Dunn, Cross, Angel and the doctor were by this time out of apartment 217 and running along the balcony, but they were far, far too late. There wasn’t one man, not even one dozen: every man for miles around seemed to be converging from above and below. And there were more and more running up the street. They went to the Buick, to help kick in Whitey’s head, or else they joined the mob by the stone stairs.
It was to take many days before the doctor worked out just what happened next. Only one got clean away. Angel, in the Rolls. Lawrence Junior fled in the other direction. The doctor managed to throw himself across the car, over the trunk at the back but he got flung clear at the first corner. About fifty black people were pouring out of the tenement. The doctor ran blindly until he thought his legs and heart would break. He kept stumbling and falling and each place where he fell he left red marks in the snow. The blood was coming from a knife wound in his side.
The wound was in his side just above the trouser belt and he suspected that his liver was punctured, which would give him an hour or two, not more. But still he ran and staggered and fell and picked himself up again. He was, at this point, no braver than Tom Shaw or any other frightened man.
In fact he was saved by the wind and the s
now. Had it been better weather there would have been people in the street. Had it been calm the drifting snow would not have covered his trail of redness.
Turning at the first crossing, in what he imagined to be an uptown direction, he saw what he had hoped for: a telephone kiosk. He kept striking the building with the side of his fist as if that helped to push him along. He thought, Steady. I dial Emergency, that’s all I have to do. But then he remembered that he had no idea where he was. He ran back to the crossing to get the numbers of street and avenue, which were still a long, long way downtown. The street sign was covered with snow and the light wasn’t clear. He banged the signpost so that the snow would fall away and reveal the writing. The snow fell in his face and he wiped it away with his sleeve. He was still staring up at it when a car suddenly swung into the street. Its headlights dazzled him for a moment. He turned and started to run back to the kiosk.
But he never reached it. The car too, turned at the crossing. It skidded in the loose snow. It was coming very fast. As it revved and followed the kerb behind him, he crazily hurtled straight across the street then started to run back to the crossing. The car drew up by the phone opposite. The doctor cowered into a dark doorstep beside a shop that was boarded up – Premises To Let. A couple climbed out of the car. They both went into the kiosk. For a moment the doctor couldn’t believe his luck. He stood pressing his shoulder against the lintel.
The door behind him opened up. It wasn’t locked.
The doctor’s wound did not hurt him too badly, but he was beginning to shake. It wasn’t only the pain that made him tremble. It was what he had seen back there: in the fighting one of their children, a boy about twelve, was shoved over the edge of the balcony and he must have been hurt very badly. The doctor thought, They will kill me, lynch me, tear me apart.
The couple left the kiosk and jumped into their big car. The young man started it foolishly again and his wheels spun round in the snow. Then he skidded off into the distance. The doctor moved up the street in the shadows but before he had even stepped into the light, he heard the pursuers. This time there was no mistake. There were three or four cars. One stopped at the crossing and five or six men got out. They were debating which side of the street they should take. They were searching for him. He thought, Somebody must have seen me fall off the back of the Rolls. Hark, hark the dogs do bark.
Household Ghosts Page 41