by Ruth Rendell
The tube took Anthony one stop back to Kenbourne Lane. At the station entrance a boy of about ten came up to him and asked him for a penny for the guy.
“In September? A bit premature, aren’t you?”
“Got to make an early start, mister,” said the boy, “or someone else’ll get my patch.”
Anthony laughed and gave him tenpence. “I don’t see any guy.”
“That’s what me and my friend are collecting for. To get one.”
The children, those in the park, and the two at the station, gave him an idea. A job for the evenings and the occasional weekend afternoon, a job for which he was admirably and thoroughly trained … It was six o’clock. He let himself into Room 2, wrote his letter, addressed an envelope and affixed a stamp to it. The whole operation took no more than ten minutes, but by the time it was done the room was so dark that he had to put the jellyfish light on. Emerging, he encountered Arthur Johnson in the hall, and Arthur Johnson was also holding a letter in his hand. Anthony would have passed him with no more than a smile and a “good evening,” but the “other” Johnson—or was that he?—turned, almost barring his passage, and fixed him with an intense, anxious, and almost hungry look.
“May I enquire if you are going out for the evening, Mr. Johnson, or merely to the post?”
“Just to the post,” Anthony said, surprised.
The hopeful light in the other man’s eyes seemed to die. And yet why should he care one way or the other? Perhaps, on the other hand, that was the answer he had wanted, for now he held out his hand, smiling with a kind of forced bonhomie, and said ingratiatingly:
“Then, since I am going there myself, let me have the pleasure of taking your letter.”
“Thanks,” Anthony said. “That’s nice of you.”
Arthur Johnson took the letter and, without another word, left the house, closing the front door silently and with painstaking care behind him.
6
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The dustmen’s strike had ended, Arthur read in his paper, on the last Monday of September. Two days later, on the first Wednesday of October, he heard the crashing of lids, the creak of machinery, and the (to his way of thinking) lunatic ripostes of the men, that told him Trinity Road was at last being cleared of refuse. He might have saved himself the trouble of writing to the local authority. Still, such complaints kept them on their toes; they had replied promptly enough. The brown envelope was marked: London Borough of Kenbourne and addressed to A. Johnson Esq., 2/142 Trinity Road, London W15 6HD. Arthur put it in his pocket. The rest of the post, a shoe shop advertising circular for Li-li Chan and a mauve-grey envelope, postmarked Bristol, for Anthony Johnson, he arranged in their appropriate positions on the hall table.
They were all out but for himself. From the phone call he had overheard, Arthur knew Anthony Johnson would be going off to college or whatever it was today, but he was relieved to have had assurance made doubly sure by the sight of the “other” Johnson, viewed from his living room window, departing at five past nine for the tube station. Not that it was of much practical assistance to him, as he too must go to work in ten minutes; it was simply comforting to know the man went out sometimes. It was a beginning.
He went back upstairs and slit the letter open with one of Auntie Gracie’s silver fruit knives. London Borough of Kenbourne. Department of Social Services. Well, he’d have expected to hear from the sanitary inspector but you never could tell these days. Dear Sir, in reply to your letter of the 28th inst., requesting information as to the availability of work in children’s play centres within the Borough, we have to inform you that such centres would come under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority and are not our …
Arthur realised what had happened and he was appalled. That he—he out of the two of them—should be the one to open a letter in error! It would have mattered so much less if it had been someone else’s letter, that giggly little Chinese piece, for instance, or that drunk, Dean. Obviously the letter must be returned. Arthur was so shaken by what he had done that he couldn’t bring himself to write the necessary note of apology on the spot. Besides, it would make him late for work. It was nearly a quarter past nine. He put the envelope and its contents into his empty briefcase and set off.
The demolition men were at work and Auntie Gracie’s living room—brown lincrusta, marble fireplace, pink linoleum—all exposed to the public view. There on the ochre-coloured wallpaper was the paler rectangle marking where the sideboard had stood, the sideboard into whose drawer he had shut the mouse. His first killing. Auntie Gracie had died in that room, and from it he had gone out to make death … Why think of all that now? He felt sick. He unlocked the gates and let himself into his office, wishing there was some way of insulating the place from the sounds of hammer blows and falling masonry, but by the time Barry lounged in at a quarter to ten, he was already composing the first draft of a note to Anthony Johnson.
Fortunately, there was very little correspondence for Grainger’s that day, the books were in apple-pie order and well up to date. Arthur found the task before him exacting, and one draft after another went into the wastepaper basket. But by one o’clock the letter—handwritten, as typewritten notes were discourteous—was as perfect a specimen of its kind as he could achieve.
Dear Mr. Johnson, please accept my heartfelt apologies for having opened your letter in error. Considering the gravity of this intrusion into your private affairs, I think it only proper to give you a full explanation. I was myself expecting a letter from the council of the London Borough of Kenbourne in reply to one of my own requesting action to be taken with regard to the disgraceful situation concerning the cessation of a regular refuse collection. Reading the Borough’s name on the envelope, I opened it without more ado only to find that the communication was intended for your good self. Needless to say, I did not read more than was strictly necessary to inform me that I was not the proper recipient. In hopes that you will be kind enough to overlook what was, in fact, a genuine mistake, I am, Yours sincerely, Arthur Johnson.
Who could tell what time Anthony Johnson would return? Arthur let himself into 142 at one-fifteen. The house was silent, empty, and the mauve-grey envelope was still on the hall table. Beside it, neatly aligned to it, Arthur placed the Kenbourne council letter and his own note, the two fastened together with a paper clip. When he returned from work just before five-thirty all the letters were still there and the house was still empty.
Alone in his flat, he began to speculate as to Anthony Johnson’s reaction. Perhaps the whole incident would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Anthony Johnson would read his note, be moved by its earnest rectitude, and come immediately upstairs to tell Arthur he quite understood and not to give it another thought. This would be his chance. He put the kettle on, set a tray with the best china, and left his front door on the latch so that Anthony Johnson would know he was expected and welcome. For, irksome as it was to entertain someone and make conversation, it was now of paramount importance. And how wonderful if, in the course of that conversation, Anthony Johnson should announce his intention of securing an evening job—as the letter had intimated he might.
He sat by the window, looking down. Li-li Chan was the first to get home. She arrived with a different young man in a green sports car, and ten minutes after they got into the house Arthur heard her on the phone.
“No, no, I tell you I very sorry.” Li-li almost, but not quite, said “velly.” “You give theatre ticket some other nice girl. I wash my hair, stay in all night. Oh, but you are so silly. I don’t love you because I wash my hair? I say I do love you, I love lots, lots of people, so good-bye now!”
Arthur craned his neck to see her and her escort leap into the car and roar off in the direction of Kenbourne Lane. He waited. Vesta Kotowsky came in alone, looking sulky. There was one, Arthur thought, who could do with an evening at home to get that draggled, greasy hair washed. At five past six Anthony Johnson emerged from under the arched entran
ce to Oriel Mews. And as Arthur watched him approach, the tall well-proportioned figure, the firm-featured, handsome face, the mane of hair crowning a shapely head, he felt a stirring of something that was part envy, part resentment. Yet this wasn’t evoked by the “other” Johnson’s good looks—hadn’t he, Arthur, had just as great a share of those himself?—or by his occupancy of Room 2. Rather it was that there, in the process of its mysterious unfair workings, fate had been kinder. Fate hadn’t saddled this man with a propensity that placed his life and liberty at constant risk.…
The front door of the house closed with a thud midway between Arthur’s pernickety click and Jonathan Dean’s ceiling-splitting crash. Ten minutes went by, a quarter of an hour, half an hour. Arthur was on tenterhooks. It was getting almost too late for tea. Time he started cooking his meal. The idea of anyone even tapping at the door, let alone coming in, while he was eating was unthinkable. Should he go down himself? Perhaps. Perhaps he should reinforce his note with a personal appearance and a personal apology.
A car door slammed. He rushed back to the window. It was the Kotowsky car, and Brian Kotowsky and Jonathan Dean got out of it. There followed a resounding crash of the front door. A long pause of silence and then a single set of footsteps mounted the stairs. Could it be at last … But, no. Dean’s room door banged beneath him.
Very uneasy now, Arthur stood at the window. And again Brian Kotowsky appeared. Arthur caught his breath in sharply as he saw Anthony Johnson also emerge from the house. He looked reluctant, even irritable.
“All right,” Arthur heard him say, “but it’ll have to be a quick one. I’ve got work to do.”
They crossed the road, bound for the Waterlily. Arthur crept down the first flight. A low murmur of voices could be heard from Jonathan Dean’s room and then a soft, throaty laugh. He went on down. From over the banisters he saw that the hall table was bare but for the inevitable cheap offer vouchers. Li-li Chan’s shoe shop circular and the two envelopes for Anthony Johnson had gone. Arthur stood by the table, nonplussed. Then some screws of paper lying in Stanley Caspian’s wastepaper basket caught his eye. He picked them out. They were the note he had written with such care and anxiety to Anthony Johnson and the envelope in which the council’s letter had been contained.
The Inner London Education Authority told Anthony that they couldn’t possibly say over the phone whether they had a vacancy for him or not. Would he write in? He wrote and got a very belated reply full of delaying tactics which amounted to telling him that he had better apply again at Christmas. At least the Kenbourne authority had replied promptly. Anthony smiled ruefully to himself when he recalled the evening on which he had received their reply. It had been fraught with annoyance.
Firstly had come that letter from Helen, a letter which was more like an essay on Roger’s miseries. I sit reading escapist literature and every time I look up I find his eyes on me, staring accusingly, and every little innocent remark I make he takes me up on “What’s that supposed to mean?” “What are you getting at?” so that I feel like some wretched shoplifter being interrogated by the great detective. I started to cry last night and—Oh, it was awful—he began to cry too. He knelt at my feet and begged me to love him.… Anthony had been so exasperated by this letter which, in his delight at receiving it, he had stood reading out in the hall by the table, that it was some minutes before he had even noticed that there was another one for him. And when he did, when he opened and read that ridiculous note from Arthur Johnson, his impatience had reached such a pitch that he had screwed it up and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. It was at this point that Brian Kotowsky had arrived and, deserted by the best pal a man ever had, had pressed him to accompany him to the Waterlily. There Anthony had been obliged to listen to a dissertation on the horrors of matrimony, the undesirable independence having a job of her own gave to a wife, and what Brian would do after Jonathan’s departure he honestly didn’t know. Obliged to listen, but not for more than half an hour.
Returning alone to 142, Anthony considered going upstairs to reassure Arthur Johnson. The man obviously had an acute anxiety neurosis. A better-adjusted person would simply have scribbled Sorry I opened your letter and left it at that. The circumlocutions, the polysyllabic words were pathetic. They breathed a tense need for the preservation of an immaculate ego, they smelt of paranoia, fear of retribution, a desire to be thought well of by all men, even strangers. But men like that, he thought, cannot be reassured, their deep-seated belief in their own worthlessness is too great and too long-established at fifty for self-confidence ever to be implanted in them. Besides, Arthur Johnson liked to keep himself to himself, and would probably only be further perturbed by an invasion of his privacy. Much better wait until they happened to meet in the hall.
In the week which followed he didn’t encounter Arthur Johnson but he was again accosted by the children at Kenbourne Lane station.
“Penny for the guy, mister?”
“Where are you going to have your bonfire?” asked Anthony. “In Radclyffe Park?” He handed over another tenpence.
“We asked. The park keeper won’t let us, rotten old bastard. We could have it in our back yard if my dad lets us.”
“Old Mother Winter,” said the other boy, “got the cops last time your dad had a bonfire.”
Anthony went off down Magdalen Hill. The kids and their parents called it Mag-da-lene, just as they called Balliol Street Bawlial. How stupid these pseudo-intellectuals were—Jonathan Dean was one of them—to sneer at mispronunciations. If the people who lived here hadn’t the right to call their streets what they wanted, who had? His eye was caught by the piece of waste ground, enclosed by its rusty tennis court netting. The authorities wouldn’t let him do official social work, but why shouldn’t he do some privately and off his own bat? Why not, in fact, think about organising November 5 celebrations on that bit of ground? The idea was suddenly appealing. He gazed through the wire at the hillocky weed-grown wilderness. On one side of it was the cutting through which the tube ran down to London, on the other the mountains of brown brick, broken woodwork and yellow crumbled plaster which was all that remained now of the demolished houses. Backing on to the ground rose the grey-brown rears of Brasenose Avenue terraces, tall tenements hung with Piranesi-like iron stairways. A man seen building a bonfire there would soon attract all the juvenile society in the neighbourhood. And he could rope in the parents, mothers especially, to organise a supper. The great Kenbourne Vale Guy Fawkes Rave-up, he thought. Why, he might set a precedent and they’d start having one there every year.
It was six o’clock on a Friday evening, Friday, October 10. If he was going to do it he’d better start on the organisation tomorrow. Work tonight, though. Seated at the table in Room 2, its gateleg propped up with Arieti’s The Intrapsychic Self, Anthony assembled and read his notes.
Not to be classified as schizophrenic, manic-depressive or paranoid. Condition cannot strictly be allied to any of these. Psychopath characteristically unable to form emotional relationships. If these are formed—fleetingly and sporadically—purpose is direct satisfaction of own desires. Guiltless and loveless. Psychopath has learned few socialised ways of coping with frustrations. Those he has learned (e.g. a preoccupation with “hard” pornography) may be themselves at best grotesque. For his actions …
With a sudden fizzle, the light bulb in the jellyfish shade went out.
Anthony cursed. For a few moments he sat there in the dark, wondering whether to appeal for help from Jonathan or the Kotowskys. But that would only involve him in another drinking session. The gentle closing of the front door a minute or two before had told him of Li-li’s departure. He’d have to go out and buy another light bulb. Just as well Winter’s didn’t close till eight.
Making for the front door, he was aware of footsteps on the landing above him. Arthur Johnson. But as he hesitated, glancing up the stairs—now might be an opportunity for that belated reassurance—he saw the figure of which he had only caught a glimp
se retreat. Anthony shrugged and went off in search of his light bulb.
7
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Arthur was certain he had given mortal offence to Anthony Johnson and thus had wrecked his own hopes. Now there was nothing for it but to watch and wait. Sooner or later the “other” Johnson must go out in the evening. He went out by day on Saturdays and Sundays all right, but what was the use of that? It was darkness that Arthur needed, darkness to give the illusion that the side passage, the courtyard, the cellar, were the alley, the mews, the deserted shadowed space that met his desires. Darkness and the absence of noisy people, car doors slamming, interference …
He could remember quite precisely when this need had first come upon him. The need to use darkness. He was twelve. Auntie Gracie had had two friends to tea and they were sitting in the back round the fire, drinking from and eating off that very china he had set out in vain for Anthony Johnson. Talking about him. He would have liked, as he would often have liked, to retreat to his own bedroom. But this was never allowed except at bedtime when, as soon as he was in bed, Auntie Gracie would turn off the light at the switch just inside the door and forbid him on pain of punishment to turn it on again. The landing light was always left on, so Arthur wasn’t afraid. He would have preferred, in fact longed for, enough light to read by or else total darkness.
Mrs. Goodwin and Mrs. Courthope, those were the friends’ names. Arthur had to sit being good, being a credit to Auntie Gracie. They talked a lot about some unnamed boy he supposed must be himself from the mysterious veiled way they spoke and the heavy meaningful glances exchanged.