by MARY HOCKING
Todd watched him elbowing his way to the door and thought, ‘Must have looked like Count Dracula.’ This struck him as very funny. He began to laugh. Todd did not often laugh, and perhaps because of this he had never learnt to regulate his laughter; once it started it got out of control and he snorted, neighed and hooped helplessly, while his stomach ached so painfully it was almost unbearable. When people turned to stare at him in one of these paroxysms, he became panic-stricken and this made the laughter worse. He had not been taken so badly since a garden fête at which he had accidentally knocked a woman’s hat into a bowl of trifle. It took him some time to calm himself. He was still having a few convulsions as he wiped his streaming eyes, but the worst of the attack was over, and the realisation that someone had joined him at the table had a final sobering effect. He looked up into the face of Rodney Cope.
Cope said, ‘You should be more careful of the company you keep.’
Todd tried frantically to collect his thoughts to deal with what his brain told him was a coincidence and his stomach recorded as an emergency.
‘Or,’ Cope said, ‘you will find yourself in trouble.’
Todd’s glasses had misted over. He polished them on a handkerchief. ‘You have a bloody nerve,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Oh, I have a nerve,’ Cope acknowledged. ‘Bloody or otherwise.’
Todd cleared his throat and put on his glasses. ‘I reserve my right to speak to anyone I choose.’
‘What do you mean, you reserve your right?’ Cope’s voice blared out very loud, an explosion of amusement that had in it a hint, not only of contempt, but of threat. The few people at the bar looked at Todd, appraising him to see why he should make such pretentious claims for himself. Cope said, ‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
Todd said, ‘I am a journalist.’ It didn’t sound enough.
‘And that entitles you to go around talking a lot of irresponsible nonsense about other people?’ Cope’s voice was still very loud and the loudness appalled Todd more than the actual words, it assaulted him in a violent way like the noise of a discotheque; one or two people had moved in from the porch and were peering round the door to see how Todd was taking this.
‘Now, let’s have it, to my face, this story of yours,’ Cope said.
Todd put his hand out for his mug of beer, his sweaty fingers slipped on the handle and he thought better of lifting it; instead, he regarded the froth on the top with frowning suspicion as though he feared he had been given short measure. ‘Get yourself a drink, man, and cool down,’ he said. He met Cope’s eyes which, always bright, now seemed incandescent; also, perhaps because of his illness, they had become rather protuberant. These strange eyes stared at Todd with delighted incredulity, either applauding Todd’s temerity or gleefully snapping at a challenge. The man’s reactions and his behaviour were so totally inappropriate to the situation that Todd could not predict what would happen next. What did happen was that Cope went to the bar and ordered a pint of beer. Todd was filled with misgivings. He looked at the people standing in the doorway; at moments such as this he was very conscious of his weak eyes and receding chin, and he knew that whatever happened no one would have any sympathy for him. Cope returned with the pint of beer, he said ‘Salut’ and raised the mug. Todd managed not to close his eyes or cringe; it was a considerable effort and he felt foolish when Cope proceeded to drain the mug at one long draught. The people by the door gave a faint cheer. Cope said to Todd, ‘Come along! We can talk this over outside.’
Todd, whose throat seemed to be closing up, left his beer on the table and followed Cope. The people round the door made way for them.
Todd said, ‘Now, what is this all about?’ He was relieved that nothing had happened, and felt reasonably in control of himself if not of the situation. There were one or two people fishing on the jetty; Cope and Todd strolled along, watching them. Cope said:
‘Do you think they catch anything right here in the harbour?’
‘They must do,’ Todd said. ‘They are always here.’
‘How unscientifically you arrive at your facts!’ Cope laughed. He sounded quite friendly now.
‘I observe,’ Todd said, ‘and then I check my facts very carefully.’
‘Well, be careful, you observe that rope . . . careful, I said!’
Todd was never sure whether he tripped over the rope or was pushed. It didn’t seem to matter much anyway. He had been threatened. As he lay in bed, with rum and a hot-water bottle provided by his landlady, this was the most significant fact to emerge from the affair. He had always known that one day he would be threatened and had looked forward to the experience as a journalistic coming of age; he believed passionately that it is the business of the press to live dangerously and this included making enemies. So far, there had been little opportunity to live dangerously in Scotney, and the nearest he had come to being threatened was the refusal of the operatic society to provide him with a free ticket because his reviews were so caustic. His reaction to that had been petulant, his present attitude not much better. He had been caught woefully unprepared for his great moment and had behaved with all the staunch intractability of a stranded fish gasping on a beach. The worst thing of all had been sitting shivering on the jetty, trying to get his breath back. How they had laughed, the people in the bar, grateful for any diversion, the children bored with the monotony of fishing; their reaction had been as lacking in reason as Cope’s action. He tried to summon anger from somewhere deep inside himself where anger could usually be found; but there wasn’t any anger in him tonight.
The next day it was hotter still. In the Gazette office, the smell of curry from the Indian restaurant next door was particularly strong.
‘It must come up through the floor boards,’ Lomax said. He looked pale and listless, but he sharpened considerably when Todd told him his story.
‘What an extraordinary thing for him to have done! There was nothing to be gained by giving you a ducking. What do you make of it?’
Todd, who had expected Lomax to register anger at this treatment of one of his reporters, said, ‘My trousers are ruined.’
Lomax tapped his front teeth with a forefinger, pondering something unconnected with damage to Todd’s trousers. ‘I suppose he would regard it as a nice piece of improvisation,’ he said eventually.
‘Like pouring red paint over Singleton?’
‘Yes, that was odd. I wonder why Singleton kept quiet about it.’
‘People laugh at you,’ Todd said bitterly. ‘I’ll see if I can speak to Cope.’ Lomax reached for the telephone. ‘It will be interesting to see what line he takes.’
‘He’ll say that I fell over a rope.’
‘That’s all right. We’ll say you didn’t fall over a rope.’ While the telephone was ringing he reverted to his grievance about the smell of curry. ‘Allinson got food poisoning from one of their curries, do you remember? I wonder if he’d like to risk it again. We might get the wretched place closed down. . . .’
Todd, who considered singleness of purpose to be essential in matters great and small, was too irritated to reply.
Chapter Sixteen
By mid-day the temperature was in the nineties. Hannah went home at lunchtime, had a bath and changed all her clothes. She liked the heat, but, as with most things in life, there were limits. As far as heat was concerned, once her limit was reached, she faded. She was fit for nothing today. This gloomy thought brought Lomax to her mind; he had scarcely been out of it throughout the week. In the past, she had been cautious about committing herself to the business of loving and had avoided casual encounters. Perhaps this was a failing, but might it not be wiser to stick with one’s failings instead of trying to emulate the enterprise of others? At least one’s failings were one’s own, and understood. Had she been too precipitate in starting an affair with Lomax, thereby jeopardising the prospects of a more enduring relationship? During the week she had worried about this, imagining she was an episode in his life. Today, exhausted
by the heat, she was not sure that she wanted either the affair or the relationship.
The office was hotter than ever when she returned in the afternoon, and she felt no better for the bath and change of clothing.
At three o’clock Rodney Cope arrived.
‘No telephone calls, no furious trumpeting from the press barons?’ It was an effective entrance; his attack was formidable.
‘I did have a call from the Gazette to ask whether you were active among us again,’ Hannah said. ‘Are you just making a call?’
‘What nonsense! I’m back in action.’
‘Are you well enough?’ He was pale and she thought there was something unusual about him. ‘You look as though you’ve been kept in the shade.’
‘How nicely you put things.’ He glanced round the room; his energy dwindled momentarily and Hannah was again fleetingly aware of sickness. ‘Surely it wasn’t always like this? So dusty and drab, and rather dead. What has happened?’
‘Nothing has happened.’ She passed the tip of one finger across her forehead, following the hairline; she did this very carefully as though she had calculated the exact amount of energy required to give temporary relief without creating more sweat than was actually removed. ‘What did you expect?’
‘Dynamic government, I suppose.’
She raised one eyebrow, to have raised both would have cost too much effort. He picked up the letters which she had typed and began to read them. The heat had slowed her down considerably, but it seemed to have had no effect on him; perhaps it was this that made him seem a little odd, as though he existed on a different plane. ‘Hallo!’ He looked up from a letter. ‘What’s this? Didn’t Neil attend the Chamber of Commerce dinner after all?’
She tried to put a file of papers into a foolscap envelope; the envelope split and she went to the waste-paper basket and stood poised above it, too dazed to decide whether to throw away the envelope or the papers. Cope said, ‘So the great speech was never made. Why not, do you know?’
Hannah dropped the envelope into the waste-paper basket and took another, larger, envelope out of the cupboard; this show of decisiveness exhausted her so much she could not reply.
‘He must have given a reason.’ Cope was determined to force the pace. ‘How did he make his excuses?’
‘He didn’t.’ She wrote an address on the envelope and fitted the file of papers in successfully. ‘He didn’t even tell the Chairman that he wouldn’t be able to attend and he hasn’t written to apologise.’
‘Can’t you get in touch with him?’
‘I’ve tried. And I’ve left messages asking him to telephone me.’ She stuck down the envelope and reached for Sellotape. ‘But I’m leaving early this afternoon, so if he telephones later it will be too bad.’
‘Why are you leaving early?’
‘Because I can’t stand the heat in this room; with the low ceiling and that wretched little window, it’s like an oven. And the lavatory smells. And anyway, there is less and less to keep me here. Neil doesn’t need a full-time secretary.’
Cope put the letters back on her desk and strolled round the room, giving an exaggerated start as he came to a wire tray on top of the filing cabinet. ‘Nothing to keep you here! There’s mountains of filing, you can’t have done any for weeks.’
‘I haven’t. The files aren’t here. Neil has them in his flat.’
‘Poor Hannah! But you must be patient, my love. I suspect one’s first year as a member of parliament is rather like marriage. . . .’
‘Neil is the one who is out of patience.’
‘Why? Did you have one of your sweet-and-sour days?’
She went across to the scales with the envelope and squinted down at a table she had typed and stuck to the base of the scales. ‘I suppose this will go letter post.’ She put the envelope down on the table and stared at it; her thought processes were sluggish. ‘I went to the police about something that happened to Mrs. Ormerod in one of Mario Vicente’s restaurants, the one opposite the harbour. It seemed to annoy Neil. He kept making references to my Puritan conscience. I think this will go letter post.’
‘Keep to the point. Mrs. Ormerod?’
‘Yes. Mrs. Ormerod. You knew her.’
‘Did I? What was I supposed to know about her?’
‘You tell me.’ She was irritated by this barrage of staccato questions. ‘I saw you with her once-out at that cottage in the marshes.’ She put the parcel down on the scales. The needle swung round, she watched it quivering from one side to the other; when it steadied, everything was still. She might have been alone. She looked at the weight recorded by the needle. It seemed to be the silence she was weighing: it was oppressive. After a few moments, she reached out a hand, without taking her eye off the needle, and groped for a pen. She wrote 27p on the corner of the envelope. ‘Well,’ she was still looking at the envelope. ‘I’ll go now.’
‘Yes,’ Cope said. ‘Off you go, Hannah.’
She picked up her handbag and looked down at the envelope again as though the decision to send it letter post was troubling her. Finally, she said, without looking at Cope, ‘You can manage?’
He did not reply. At length she was forced to look at him. It was as though neither had a face, only eyes. He said, ‘Yes, I can manage.’
Hannah ran down the stairs and walked so rapidly to the post office that the people she passed looked at her in amusement. A man said to his wife, ‘Perhaps she’s found a letter bomb!’ She thrust the package into the letter-box and walked on, towards the promenade.
It was half-past four; the tide had turned and the breeze had died down, the heat was intense. A hard light caught each ripple on the sea and danced along with it. The white buildings dazzled and a hot red band glowed above the door of a café. The pavilion at the end of the pier looked dark and rather dingy, the sun catching a few of its domes but leaving the rest in shadow. The tread of passing feet had lost its sprightliness, no one hurried; it had been a wonderful day, but this was the moment when one felt the gap until drinking time.
Hannah sat in one of the deck-chairs near the Imperial Hotel. After what might have been a few minutes, or an hour, she was conscious of a quiet, hairy young man standing, shirt flapping, ticket machine held at navel-level.
‘I only sat here for a moment to rest,’ she explained.
‘Yes, all right.’ He spoke gently, as though she wasn’t well. ‘I don’t think they ought to charge after four, anyway.’ He moved on. Behind Hannah, a woman said to a companion. ‘That’s where the ratepayers’ money goes! People sit out here until seven o’clock.’
Hannah sat in the deck-chair until a quarter to seven. It was still very hot and she did not think she could eat much; at the same time, she felt hollow and in need of something. She had a cheese salad in a help-yourself buffet. Then she walked to the Summer Gardens and bought a ticket for a concert by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. The great glass doors at the side of the concert hall were open; instead of going inside, Hannah sat on a deck-chair in the garden. It was a brilliant evening, the stars seemed to be just above the trees. She had no idea what music was played.
It was a quarter-past ten when she came to the corner of Saddlers Row. There was a lot of noise on the promenade; singing from the pavilion on the pier, shouts from the beach where there were several swimmers and even more spectators; from open windows came the sound of voices, music, a television serial of the more violent kind involving endless police sirens. But most of the buildings in Saddlers Row were deserted at night and as Hannah turned the corner the volume of sound diminished considerably. She opened the door to her flat and hesitated, looking up the dark shaft of stairs; she glanced back towards the street. There were two people in the car park opposite; she heard a woman say, ‘Leave the doors open a moment or two, Alf; it’s like an oven.’ Hannah closed the door, bolted it, and went up the stairs to her flat. It was stiflingly hot. She opened all the windows. The man and the woman were still in the car park, she could see the car’
s headlights.
They had gone by the time she was ready for bed. The car park was empty, save for the few cars which never seemed to be collected. In the distance, there was music from a discotheque; it must have been at least two streets away, but although it did not come very loudly to her ears, it still had that violent quality, the sense of a need to break through the civilisation barrier. There was no relief from the heat; when she leant out of the window it was like breathing in warm cotton wool. A long shadow moved in the car park. She crouched on the bed, to one side of the window, watching. There was no further movement. She listened intently, but each time she had her ear tuned to the silence in the immediate area, there was a grinding noise from the promenade as though all the cars were travelling in second gear. She lay down on the bed and drew a sheet over her body. Gradually, it grew quieter. It became darker, too; she could usually see from her bed a portion of the ruined wall surrounding the car park, thrusting up from the pavement like a fang, but now it merged into the darkness. Everything beyond the window was without form.
Now, she became aware of noises which seemed to come from within the framework of the building. On the other side of her bedroom area, just beyond the head-rest of her bed, was the building where the obscure religious sect met. They occupied one floor. She had never been sure what went on on the other floors. In fact, she knew very little of what went on in the neighbourhood in which she lived. From the sounds which reached her ears tonight, she judged that the next building must be infested with rats; there was a constant scratching and a squeaking of floor boards. How flimsy it was, this little shell in which she lived; a paper house. She looked at the clock on the shelf by her bed; it was not facing her directly, but as far as she could make out the time was five past two. There was a sound as though somewhere a door was swinging on rusty hinges. Why should this happen on an airless night? She lay listening for noises, negotiating them cautiously as if they were stepping stones which would lead her through to the morning. She was having trouble with a sharp click, which sounded more metallic than anything she had yet heard, when she became aware that someone was moving very quietly close to the skirting board on the other side of the wall. Alarm produced a sensation in her head she had had only once before when she bit into something very hot in an Indian restaurant; it fizzed up her nose and exploded in her brain. She put out her hand and switched on the light, banging her elbow against the wall as she did so. The noise stopped; but she knew, as she huddled with her ear to the wall, that there was someone within less than a foot of her on the other side of the wall. She got out of bed and dressed quickly in whatever came first to hand. The floor boards creaked, betraying every step she took; it was as though the flat itself had turned against her. In under three minutes, she was down by the street door. Her car was parked some distance away; there were double yellow lines immediately outside, but at the end of the road there was space for four cars to park. She bent down and eased the bolts back gently. Suppose someone was standing just outside the door? She knelt down on the floor, gently drawing back the door mat, and peered through the crack at the bottom of the door. Nothing but cobwebby blackness. She opened the door and raced up the street. There were six cars parked very close, hers was hemmed in so that it could not be extricated. She walked on.