by A. L. Barker
It was like him to leave her to move in by herself. “I’ve business to attend to, this shag’s off to Brussels in the morning, I’ve got to get his order. You’ll be all right, Gipsy, if I give the cabbie the address.” He could always have business when he didn’t want to be bothered, but of course Marise was alright. With the bags packed and the taxi-driver informed where to take her she could not be so terribly wrong.
She watched him bounce up the steps. It was he who was wrong and it could be terrible for him. Soon after they were married he had suddenly jumped out of bed and stood with his back to her hitting his temples with his knuckles. She recognised a strong emotion and was humbled and touched that she could so deeply move anyone.
“I love you too, Jack,” she said timidly. He turned round, his face broke and his stomach heaved. He had doubled up, laughing like a maniac.
He sent the door of the flat wide to the wall, his first action was to knock down a piece of plaster.
“What a time I had getting away. Come and have dinner, they said, we’ve plenty to talk about. That’s certainly true, said I, but I’ve got a wife waiting to be carried across the threshold. What do you think? Do you like it?”
“It’s old. You didn’t tell me.”
“Not run down, though, not yet. And we shan’t be here long.”
“Why must we be here at all? We were all right where we were.”
“I’m slightly in the red, not much, more in the pink really. We’ll be out of here before you know. If you don’t like it – don’t you like it?”
“Where will we go? Will it be nicer?”
“You can bet your life it will. Are there any glasses?”
“How long shall we be here? A week?”
He said loudly, “Come off it, the place isn’t that bad,” and unwrapped a bottle of whisky. “Give me time.”
“The bedroom’s full of white hairs.”
He noticed the suitcases and his nose blanched, it did when he was annoyed. “You haven’t even unpacked!”
“Even? What else haven’t I done?”
Tomelty threw his hat into a chair. He had a counter-jumper’s skull someone had remarked, so neat and narrow, and Marise had overheard just at the moment when she was, or supposed she was, indissolubly bound to him. At her wedding breakfast, in fact. So that from then on she had the thought to carry with her that she had thrown herself away. Later she realised that death was only one of many things that could part them.
“Glasses.” He turned his blanched nose to the kitchen. She heard him opening cupboards, running water. He came back shaking dry two cups he had rinsed. “There aren’t any glasses.”
“There’s no bread either.”
He didn’t upset her when he was angry. She didn’t always notice. Now she did, she noticed that he slopped the whisky into the cups and some of it splashed out and he planked the bottle down in the wet. Ordinarily he was a fastidious man, even fussy, and vain in his movements. He liked to watch his small, sinewy, spry hands and complete their actions with a flourish, an arabesque for five fingers and a wrist-bone.
“Here –” He picked the cup up by the rim and pushed it at her, and when she protested that she did not like whisky because it hurt her throat he drained both cups one after the other. “Here’s to Lilliput.”
“To what?”
“They call this place Lilliput Lodge. Don’t ask me why.”
“Because Lilly put it here.”
He glared at her. “Silly bitch,” and then he laughed. They both laughed, they had always been able to do that together. “How’s the bedroom? How’s the bed? Now that matters,” he put out his hand to her, “we should look at the bed.”
“Not now.”
“Why not now? What else is there to do now?”
Marise picked up Barbra-Bear and twisted her shoulders away from him. “I don’t like that thing in the daytime.”
‘You don’t like it any time.” He poured a cup of whisky and sipped it as he wandered round the room. He had a wellnigh indestructible sunniness which perhaps, since it did not warm but only sparked, came from somewhere colder than the sun. “Look at this clock, it’s a German line from Westphalia. I carried it for years and this is the first time I’ve seen one that wasn’t in going order. You know,” he took a sip of whisky, drawing it piercingly through his teeth, “this place will be good for you. You’ll be on the ground here.”
“I liked it at Plummer’s, I didn’t want to change.”
“Eight floors up had a bad psychological effect.” In the bay window he twitched up the curtain and wound it like a coif round his face. “You were getting above yourself. Not holy – rarefied I should say, but not rare.” He winked. “You’ll be able to see everyone coming in and out.”
“What everyone?”
“The neighbours all have to come through that door.”
“Why should I want to see them?”
“To remind you that someone else is alive. Gyp, I think you sometimes forget.”
“What do I forget? I didn’t forget to unpack, the minute I got here I thought I’ll get my own things round me and it’ll seem more like home. And I didn’t forget bread, the baker came and he hadn’t any white, I didn’t forget that you like white bread.”
“You’ll see every move everyone makes.” He clowned to himself with the curtain across his nose. “Little Sister is watching.”
“I shall be too busy washing and cooking and cleaning.” Under this banner she bustled across the room and took a shoe-tree out of the suitcase. “A woman’s work is never done. You forget that.”
Tomelty had taken nearly half a pint of whisky, but alcohol did not go to his counter-jumper’s head, he soaked up and held it without evidence and neither pressure nor twisting could wring any of it out. It firmed his rather trumpery good humour into joy, as if he had at last found reason to be joyful.
“Here’s one you’ll see, one of our neighbours. No butcher, baker or ten per-cent census taker: age forty to forty-five, presses his pants under his mattress and dreams about Ernie.”
“It’ll be Mr Shilling.” Marise sat on the couch and pulled rubber cubes out of Barbra-Bear’s side.
“Another form of life for you. What a whirl.”
“I know lots of people, I don’t have to chase after anyone.”
“We must get you something finer than these curtains. It’s like looking out of a meat safe.” He pulled the curtains back, leaving the window bare, and Marise caught a glimpse of a man who seemed to be staring into her. It went a long way in his favour, the first plunge of the eye, for a moment the three of them were fixed – Marise, Tomelty and the man outside. It was as soundless as lightning and, to Marise, as electric. Then the curtain fell back into place and of their own volition her hands began pressing back the pieces into Barbra-Bear’s side.
Tomelty said, “I’ve seen him before.”
“You’ve seen everyone before.”
“And I remember everyone, that’s the secret of my success. I tell you, I know this hom.” Tomelty came away from the window to the whisky bottle. “He polishes his boot-soles.”
“I know a lot of people to.” Marise went to the door of the flat and opened it. The man who was stepping into the entrance hall looked round. He was tall and solid and she saw at once that he would be remembered. He had a packed face with uncompromisingly functional features, a big nose with a spade-shaped end and a wide mouth with strong red lips. Only his chin looked as if it might let him down, it folded too suddenly into his hard collar.
“Excuse me, I thought you were the postman,” said Marise. He transferred his briefcase and newspaper to his left hand and lifted his bowler an inch off his forehead. “Are you Mr Shilling?”
“Yes.”
Marise nodded and closed the door. To Tomelty, standing with the cup halfway to his lips, she said, “He lives on the top floor, he’s got a cat.”
“Why did you do that, for God’s sake? Now he knows.”
“Kn
ows what?”
“I’m trying to remember. The thing is, I may not care for him to remember me.”
Marise was slightly impressed, partly because of Tomelty who was a bouncer and had put bouncing into the technical class. Bouncing was more than his nature, it was his diploma, his college education. It had maintained her in a style to which she had soon grown accustomed. But her impression was partly, and more, to do with this place in which she now found herself. It was unagreeable insofar as it did not agree with what she regarded as her expectation of life. If these rooms were going to pull their grey woolly old air over her eyes and tell her that everything had been used up, what was there to expect, except to sit where other people had sat – in their laps almost – and put her fingers into their finger-holes and rub where they had rubbed? Except to leave a hair, except to be here long enough to be able to leave a white hair.
“Shilling you say his name is? I knew a Bob Penny. This one looks a cold fish, cold fish wear bowler hats.”
Had she been able to put her hand into Tomelty’s side and pull out the rubber stuffing, she would sometimes have pulled it all out from his feet to his head and left him as an empty skin.
“It pays to remember,” he said. “Sometimes it pays more than others.”
“What good can it do us to be in this awful place?”
“I don’t see anything awful. I see a nice high airy room with gracious furniture and gracious trees outside. This place has graciousness, Gyp. Naturally, you wouldn’t recognise that. Plummer’s was too new, graciousness is never less than fifty years old.”
“There was an old woman here who hadn’t opened the windows for fifty years. The wardrobe’s full of her hair.”
“This place will save us a pony a month in rent, that’s the good it’ll do.”
“How long shall we be poor?”
Tomelty burst out laughing. “We’re not poor, we’re careful. I’m a careful man.”
He had to be. A careless technician is still a technician, but a careless bouncer is a common enemy.
“Not with my life,” said Marise. “I can look after that.”
Tomelty had foxy white teeth when he grinned. “You don’t have a life, you have me.”
He liked to think that she was an extravagance which he could afford and other men couldn’t. She was pretty and he wanted her silly: whatever she said or did he made it to seem silly. Having a silly, pretty wife cut a bigger dash than having an expensive car, it was likely to go on longer and cost more than money. Marise knew this because she wasn’t silly.
“Full of hair?” He took the whisky bottle delicately by the neck. “Let’s see.”
Marise recalled that Ralph Shilling had the cat. She hoped it would be ginger with white feet and that it would play with her. Perhaps Ralph Shilling would give her his key so that she could make friends with the cat. It was easy to be friends with a cat because there was no personality involved, the trouble with friendships was that people made up their minds that she was this person or that and blamed her when she was herself.
“So this is where we cooshay,” said Tomelty from the bedroom. “Did you ever see such a gracious bed? It’s matriarchal, solid Empire this bed is. Did you say it had a horse-hair mattress?”
“The wardrobe smells.”
“Because it’s air-tight I expect and it’s been shut up. We’ll keep the door open for a bit, that’ll freshen it.” He poured a drink and toasted himself in the spotted mirror. “I want you to be happy.”
“How can I be when you take me away from my friends?”
“I want you to make friends.”
“I was well liked. And understood. I didn’t have to explain myself – ‘I get up late because I don’t like to get up early’ – ‘I have no shoes on so that I can find my way in the dark’ – ‘My husband is in Manchester, this is only his coat, I am trying to think that this is not only his coat’ –”
He shouted, “I want you to make friends!” In the hush the old grey dust puffed up in shock. Tomelty dropped on to the bed. “You know I can’t help being away, Gyp, it’s my job. You’ve got to stop shutting yourself up and talking to the walls.”
“I talked to the baker, he asked me to go away with him.”
“I want you to get out of the house every day. You’re not to have things sent, go and buy them at the shops.”
Marise said with dignity, “I am hardly ever in. If you only knew, it’s difficult to get everything done in the time.”
He looked at her sombrely. “This bed’s comfortable. Come and cooshay with me.”
“I wish you wouldn’t use those words.”
“What words?”
“I know they’re vulgar. Keep them for your drinking companions.”
He rolled on the mattress, his sleeked hair split into tufts. “You’re a marvel you are –” suddenly snatching at her he pulled her to the bed. They fought bitterly, she buffeted his face with her hands. There came a twangling from the bed-springs, and hearing it she wondered why there should be music, why deep old organ music should be glorying over them. Then she was on her back on the bed, his chest on hers and his breath, very fiery, in her nostrils.
He had his eyes closed, he always did when he kissed. Raptly dreaming he looked, like a tombstone face with white eyeballs. Marise, who kept hers open, was furious with everything – especially with herself for bringing on this kind of thing. She groped around, found Barbra-Bear, and rammed its woolly snout into Tomelty’s mouth.
There was an explosion. For a slight man he made a lot of noise. Marise, tossed bodily aside, felt a correspondingly strong satisfaction.
“You bitch!”
“We have unpacking to do,” Marise said primly.
“Women have been murdered for less.” He stared at her, his hair shocked over his eyes. “I could kill you, Gipsy! I’d like to.”
“With a knife? We don’t know where the knives are – in the dresser drawer, I expect. Would you bury me under the floor? Then you could lock up and go away, no-one would think anything of that because it’s your job to go away. You could say I was staying with my mother and people would believe it. They always think they know what I’d do –”
“You think you know what I’d do – and what I wouldn’t do.’
“I’m next to your skin, I ought to know.”
“You’re under my skin, you’re a tick and I should tear your head off!”
Marise had to laugh. She had just seen the Barbra-Bear on its back, its grubby skirt round its neck and paws up as if someone was pointing a gun at it.
“Did you ever see such a fool?” she said. “We had a dog that used to roll on its back. My father said it was asking to be forgiven its sins. Do you think animals can be? Do you think they count as heathen? Is hell-fire stoked up with them?”
Tomelty sat on the bed, staring, but she could see that the brunt had moved off her.
“It’s like a club. You’ve got to belong to God, but not everyone can join. There should be somewhere for those who can’t, not so pearly and without music. I’d rather have dogs than angels –”
“Will you shut up?” said Tomelty. “I’ve just remembered. My God!”
“What?”
“It’s come to me from a long way back. I never forget a face.” He lay down and clasped his hands under his head. “If I gave my mind to it I could recall the doctor who delivered me.”
“What face?”
“Shilling you say he calls himself? He gave me a shock because I remembered the face but not whose face. I knew it was nothing much good.”
“I think he has a kind face.”
“When I knew that I was remembering –” he yawned – “it’s what they call a stimulus. The poor old brain got a message it hadn’t had for a dozen years and being without new instructions did what it used to do.”
“What did it used to do?”
“Prickled up, boggled a bit. I was a skinny kid at the time and though you may not believe it I was pure in hear
t. Mind you, I’d begun to think along my own lines, but I must have been pure because I thought I was the only one with such thoughts. This fellow with his insurance book came every week to collect half a crown from my mother. She had us paid up for burying, you see. Well, I was used to him, we all were, he was one of the family. He always came at Saturday dinner time and stayed to eat with us. It was a shock, not to say an earth-tremor, when he was taken up for murder.”
Marise sat on the bed with Barbra-Bear in her arms. “Did he murder anyone you knew?”
“He did a very fancy job, it made breakfast reading for several Sundays.”
“What happened?”
“He was acquitted. Insufficient evidence.”
“Did he do it?”
“Oh, he did it, he did it all. No doubt about that. What shook me was how he did it. I wasn’t short on imagination and I thought I was original – nasty, you know, but different.”
“What did he do?”
“Never mind.”
Marise pouted. “What’s it to do with Mr Shilling?”
“Only that he’s the dead ringer of this character, face, walk, bowler hat and all. John Brown his name was. What a name! I can tell you, I got quite a turn just now and I couldn’t think why. Defence mechanism that was, perish the thought of John Brown. I had to dig up the memory.”
Marise poked into Barbra-Bear’s side and brought out a cube of rubber. “Here’s an early memory of hers, of when they sewed on her eyeballs. All her early memories are painful.”
“If you must keep that thing why don’t you mend it?”
“You like to think I’m a child, don’t you, so that you can shut me up while you’re away? You don’t want me to live when you’re not here. You’re the one that wants a toy.” She went to the mirror to exchange looks with herself. “Perhaps Mr Shilling is the murderer.” There was one particular black spot on the mirror the size of a sixpence. She stood so as to get it in the middle of her forehead.
2
Twice Krassner had picked up the tossing-stone which Ralph Shilling kept on his desk and twice put it down again – out of respect, one would hope, for the occasion. If so, it was the only respect he did show and was short-lived because finally he took the pebble and rolled it from hand to hand while he explained.