No sooner had he sat down at his desk than Anne had the audacity to come after him. She was cradling the decanter in her arms as though it was an infant; the wine was dribbling on to the floor. She swayed on her feet, and as she did so a further quantity slopped over the crook of her arm.
‘Anne,’ he protested. ‘Where is the stopper? You are spilling it.’
‘It will do the carpet good,’ she said. She began to wander about the room, peering short-sightedly at the books on his shelves. ‘When the time comes for us to leave our lovely home,’ she said, ‘you will need several trunks in which to cart the wretched things away.’
‘It is not sensible to remove books in trunks or boxes,’ he replied. ‘The accumulated weight would be too much. It is far better to tie them into bundles of twelve or so.’
‘But of course,’ she said. ‘I might have realised there was a sensible way to do it.’ Without warning, though he should have known it was coming, she reached up and, tugging at a volume of essays, sent it tumbling to the floor.
‘Don’t’, he cried.
‘I am helping you,’ she said, ‘towards your first dozen.’
‘Please,’ he said. ‘Leave me alone.’
‘Please,’ she repeated mockingly. ‘How polite we are to each other.’
He tried to take her by the elbow and lead her to the glory hole – he couldn’t allow her to run amok in his library – but she broke away from him and stumbled to the window. He heard the wine splattering on the floor. ‘I’ll leave you alone in my own good time,’ she told him.
He returned to his desk and pretended to be absorbed in his book. He had his back to her. Now and then he made senseless jottings in the margin. He had read two pages and taken in neither of them, when she asked, ‘How long will this go on?’
‘What do you mean?’ he said, stammering, because he couldn’t cope with her.
‘The Popes,’ she said. ‘The Blessed Popes.’
‘I have sent it to Longman’s,’ he said stiffly. ‘You know that.’
‘Then why haven’t they replied? I have looked for the post every day, as you have.’
‘I haven’t been counting the days,’ he said.
‘Probably,’ she said, ‘they haven’t anyone clever enough to read it.’
He tried to close his ears to her but she was relentless. The drink had affected her speech; she was slurring her words. ‘I don’t know why you bother,’ she said, ‘considering no one has ever taken the slightest notice of your work.’
‘Please stop,’ he muttered under his breath. ‘For the love of God, please stop.’
‘But then when one thinks how abruptly you were got rid of, you were scarcely more successful as a schoolmaster.’
‘Shut your mouth,’ he said. He sat hunched over his desk and heard her go out of the door. He hoped she was tiring; sometimes she gave up and, sprawling fully dressed on her narrow bed, slept and snored the night away. He didn’t think she had gone in search of more to drink; the decanter was still a quarter full. He listened at the open door and heard her rummaging about in the dressing-room.
He wondered if he dared leave the house to call on Mr Bush. At least there he was approved of; the old man never allowed him to feel he was in the wrong. But then how was he to get out of the house without being detected? As soon as she heard his footsteps Anne would run down the stairs in pursuit; she could lose her balance and fall. There is no way out for me, he thought. He would stay with her not only tonight but for the rest of his life. It was his burden to protect her from herself.
Anne was looking for the letters he had written to her before they were married. She couldn’t remember where she had put them, only that she had wrapped them in something. There was a sentence in one of the letters which had never been explained. It had to do with someone’s having been unfaithful to somebody’s image. She had hidden the letters because she was afraid a housebreaker might steal them.
Even as she tugged at the top drawer of the chest she distinctly heard a clatter in the back yard. She gazed into the darkness, trembling. A man was out there, poised on the top of the wall, ready to leap down. There were two women talking to each other under the street lamp on the corner, and she signalled to them, trying to draw their attention to the figure on the wall, but they didn’t see her. The man’s shoulders bulged under the black sky. She shrank back from the window and fell onto her knees, staring transfixed at the floor. No one has ever seen me, she thought. I have always been one of those players situated at the back of the stage. When violence struck she would be crushed, not because she was the central objective but because she was in the way. Soon would come a splintering of wood as the yard door was forced inwards. J.S. Watson, forever reading, everlastingly scribbling, would fail to hear the stealthy footsteps in the hall.
Summoning all her strength, she reached up and felt for the pistols in the drawer above her head. She crawled on to the landing and scuttled past the head of the stairs.
‘For the love of God,’ cried Watson, swinging round from the window and seeing her on all fours like an animal. He dragged her upright and made her sit in the chair by the fire. Her teeth were chattering.
‘There’s someone out there,’ she told him.
‘It’s cats,’ he said. ‘Cats prowling.’
‘They are after my letters,’ she moaned.
He didn’t know what she meant. He had been rubbing with his handkerchief at the wine stains on the carpet, and now he began to wipe the surrounds.
‘I have become invisible,’ she said, and she held her hand out in front of her and, spreading her fingers, peered at him as if through a grill. All at once she wailed, ‘I have lost them. They were important to me.’ He took no notice and asked her what she was doing with his grandfather’s pistol.
‘I need protection,’ she said. ‘I am alone in there.’ She waved the barrel in the direction of the glory hole.
‘You would be better off taking the dog in with you,’ he said, and, as though it had understood, the dog got up from its place beside the hearth and slunk from the room. He called its name and clicked his fingers, but it backed away from him along the passage. He grew irritated and slammed the door.
‘Snap has never liked me,’ she said. ‘You saw to that. You’ve never allowed anyone to like me.’
‘No,’ he agreed, ‘I am a wicked man, and will no doubt burn for it.’
She watched him for a while and it maddened him. The sight of her slack mouth, her plum-coloured cheeks, filled him with revulsion.
At last she said, ‘I shall go away. You don’t want me here. I shall leave in the morning.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I shall be able to get on with my work.’
He heard her attempting to rise from her chair and the grunt which escaped her as she fell back again. He knew now that she would keep on at him until it was time for bed.
‘And which of your many friends,’ he asked, ‘will have the honour of taking you in?’
‘Mrs Tulley will have me,’ she answered. She sounded subdued.
He hoped she wasn’t intending to weep. More than anything he distrusted her tears, suspecting that they sprang to her theatrical eyes at will and had nothing to do with her dry heart, which lay like a stone in her breast.
‘On second thoughts,’ she said, ‘I shall go tonight.’
‘Do as you please,’ he muttered.
‘Mrs Tulley,’ she said, ‘leads a normal life. She goes out. In the daytime, and in the evening.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he said. ‘I’m all in favour of a normal life.’ He put away his handkerchief and picked up the book she had earlier pulled from the shelf.
‘My mother made my father happy,’ Anne said. ‘I remember a particular smile.’
‘You won’t remember mine,’ he replied, ‘particular or otherwise. You’ve not caused me to smile in twenty years.’
He was on the landing, on hands and knees, when Ellen Pyne came back. He called out to her tha
t she must wait. He was dipping a rag into a basin of water and wiping the skirting board clean. But she didn’t hear, and knocked again, louder than before.
After a few moments he went downstairs and let her in. She wanted to know what was wrong with the gas-mantle in the hall.
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘It’s given up, Sir. It went out when I was on the step.’
He didn’t reply. She went into the dining-room and he followed her. Here too the gas was unlit, though there was a glimmer of light from the lamp in the street outside. She could see that the tea things hadn’t been touched, and exclaimed, ‘You haven’t taken tea, Sir.’
‘I didn’t think of tea,’ he answered.
She bent down and picked up a glass from the carpet. ‘Will you be wanting supper, Sir?’ she asked.
‘What?’ he said, and then, ‘Yes, of course. Some bread and cheese.’
He was fingering his ear and she thought that his cheek was swollen, though perhaps it was a trick of the lamp-light.
He left her and began to climb the dark stairs. ‘The mistress has gone away,’ he said, ‘for a day or two. I am cleaning some port wine that has been spilled on the landing. In the morning you had best go over the paint work again. There’s also some spilt on the threshold of the library door. I’m telling you in case you should wonder what it is.’
She half followed him up the stairs. ‘Won’t you leave it, Sir,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to it in the morning.’
‘I know what I’m doing,’ he replied.
She went down into the hall again. She was shivering; the house seemed colder than usual.
The master, she thought, was obviously upset. Probably the mistress had thrown wine over him. Such things had happened before.
She laid the tray and prepared supper. Poor man! What a life he led! She respected him, though she had never felt easy in his presence, unlike the mistress, who was a different kettle of fish and whose nasty little ways made her all too human. When the mistress enquired how her mother did, or what Margaret was doing, it was simple to answer her. If the master asked a question, even something as ordinary as ‘How are you this morning, Ellen Pyne?’ it always sounded as if he was seeking deeper information, nothing to do with her health, more with her character. It made her uncomfortable; she didn’t like to feel stupid. But then nobody could read the books he did without being a cut above everyone else. The things locked up in books made people ask clever questions. And yet, when the mistress had one of her turns and he had to pick her up off the floor, he carried her to her room with such a hang-dog expression on his face that it was plain that none of his books were of much use to him. Not at that moment. Sometimes, when the mistress had been particularly cruel and he had shouted back at her, he wandered up and down the stairs like a lost soul. She longed to tell him that he was in the right of it, that among the people she knew the mistress would long since have got a black eye for her pains, if not worse. Her mother had once given her father a piece of her lip and he had kicked her down the stairs, even though she was expecting a child. The master and mistress were poorly matched. For all her boasting it was obvious that the mistress came from a lower class than he and found it hard to keep up with him.
While the master ate his supper, Ellen saw to the fire in his bedroom, and drew the curtains.
He had left his Sunday boots by the door and she took them through into the dressing-room and put them away in the bottom of the wardrobe.
The master stayed up very late. Though she pulled the coverlet about her ears she could still hear him in the rooms below, pulling out the drawers of his desk and talking to himself.
At breakfast he asked Ellen what she would do when he gave up the house.
‘I shall go home, Sir,’ she said. ‘For a time.’
‘To New Cross?’
‘Yes, Sir,’ she said. She explained that her mother was in poor health and that she would look after her if it could be managed.
‘Are you fond of her?’ he asked.
‘Yes,’ she said.
She had evidently been crying; her eyelids were red and she had recently bathed her face. He hoped she wasn’t in some sort of trouble – she was generally so cheerful. ‘The greatest misfortune which can happen among relations,’ he told her, ‘is a different way of upbringing and an habitual blindness to certain defects.’
‘Yes, Sir,’ she said.
He would have continued the conversation but she was looking anxiously at the door. He could tell that she was afraid that Anne might come back and scold her for not getting on with her work. Even now there were tears in her eyes. Perhaps mention of her mother had upset her. It was difficult to know with women whether they were actually distressed or merely indulging in female emotions. He dismissed her, and she turned away with such a woe-begone expression on her plump face that he felt uncomfortable. He thought something had been expected of him.
After breakfast he went upstairs to the library. The dog was crouching on the landing with its head on its paws. Watson reflected that he hadn’t yet told Mrs Hill when he would be quitting the house, and sitting down at his desk he began to write her a letter. He gave up before it was completed. His hand was so unsteady – he hadn’t slept well – that what he had written was illegible. He stuffed the letter into a drawer, intending to finish it later in the day. Tidying the surface of his desk he noticed a smear of ink on the title page of Valerius Flaccus. The appearance of a manuscript, to the ignorant eye of a publisher, was almost as important as its content, though in this case he was far too useful to Bohn’s Library for them to be put off by a single sheet of spoiled paper. All the same, he would have to write out the page again. He would have done it there and then – he could have held his wrist with one hand to guide his pen – but he was restless. The window was open and yet there didn’t seem to be any air in the room.
He went downstairs and whistled for the dog to follow him. It took no notice, though he heard it growling in its sleep. Before he left the house he called out to Ellen Pyne that the key to the store cupboard was on the hall table and that she could take the candles she wanted.
He thought he would go into town and call on William Longman at Paternoster Row, and he walked in the direction of the railway station. Halfway there he decided that he was wasting his time. There wasn’t a more despised creature than an author, particularly one without any advantages of birth or fortune to set him off. Longman was bound to be too busy to see him, and he was in no mood to be treated like a tradesman; it wouldn’t help him to lose his temper with the secretary. Besides, it was more urgent that he should go to Turner’s on the High Street.
Once there, he made some calculations in his head and, after discussing the matter with the trunk-maker, left the shop without having come to a decision.
It was a blustery day and refuse sailed up from the gutters; ribbons of paper fluttered at his knees. He had to hold onto his hat as he turned the corners. Usually his head was so full of words, of sentences he was trying to wrestle into shape, that he was hardly aware of his surroundings, but now his mind was curiously blank and he was overwhelmed by the noise in the streets. There was such a roaring and rattling all about him that he felt giddy. He stumbled into a side road, and still the sounds followed him, increasing in volume as though a monstrous wave reared up behind him; soon it would break over his head and smash him to the cobble-stones. He walked faster and knew he was listening to his own blood pounding in his ears. In spite of the cold wind the sweat dripped into his eyes.
At last he stopped in the doorway of a dark little shop and fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief. A pigeon flew out from the ledge above his head; he started so violently that he almost lost his balance and tumbled from the step. His heart beat like a drum. He took off his hat and was about to wipe his forehead when he saw the stains on his handkerchief. An old woman passed, carrying firewood, and for an instant the doorway was filled with the stench of her clothes. I am no better than
she, he thought, and he dropped the handkerchief to the ground and rushed out into the street. More than anything he wanted to lie down and sleep.
All the same, when he came to St Martin’s Road he walked straight on past the house and rang the door bell of No.32.
Mr Bush was out; his son Fred was in the studio painting a stormy sky above a windmill. Watson immediately began to complain of the disgraceful state of the roads. ‘The dirt,’ he cried, ‘the potholes. Above all the noise.’
‘I don’t know when my father will be back,’ said Fred. ‘Possibly not for hours.’
‘Twice this morning,’ Watson said, ‘I was almost run down. Once by a Vauxhall omnibus, and again by a dray horse.’ He had no idea why he had made such a remark – it was untrue. Confused, he lowered himself into Mr Bush’s armchair by the easel and wiped his forehead with a paint rag. ‘I wanted to call last night,’ he said. ‘I should have come but was prevented.’
‘You wouldn’t have seen my father,’ said Fred. ‘He was at a musical evening.’ He looked over his shoulder at Watson, who was lying back in the chair with his eyes closed. There was a shred of old newspaper caught in the laces of his boots. It was plain that he might sit there all day.
Several minutes elapsed, during which time Watson struggled to remember the name of a student he had once known in Dublin. He could see his face quite clearly; even the room he had lived in was familiar to him. There had been a green ottoman under the window with a book propping up one leg because the floor sloped.
‘Is this a large house?’ he asked suddenly.
Fred said he supposed it was. He hadn’t measured it.
‘And does someone live in the attic?’
‘Two people,’ said Fred. ‘Both women.’
‘And what about Mr Williams in Hastings?’ demanded Watson.
Watson’s Apology Page 16