by A. L. Barker
Tomelty sprang as he walked on the balls of his feet, it was one of his ways of signifying his mood. Marise did not bother to identify it nor to look at him beyond noting that he was there. She had eyes only for John Brown, held back the curtain to watch him, and he saw her.
Telling Tomelty what happened when she met John Brown’s eyes Marise said that he looked through her. But it was really something of a devastation because there was not one fibre left of Marise as Marise. She was emptied out of herself and refilled with his presence. The refilling was not an experience she enjoyed. It was the first time it had happened to her and she made up her mind that it would be the last. An excursion was one thing, dispossession was another.
“If he’d looked through you,” said Tomelty, “he’d have seen what a little sham you are.”
“At least he’s a gentleman, I think that’s important. Not knowing how to treat people is the root of all evil. Of course it won’t be his least, he has to be something much, much less. Is being a murderer less than being a gentleman? I should think it’s more.”
“You should think,” said Tomelty, “but you don’t. I pulled his leg, made out I wasn’t sure about him.”
Marise clasped herself in her arms. “He makes my blood run cold.”
“I warned him about you. I don’t know if he took it in or not. He’s a bit bazaar. I caught him washing his money.”
“Did you warn him about you?”
“He thinks I’m lying about you to keep him away.”
“You hate me having anyone else, don’t you? Look how you hate Uncle Fred. And you’d even try to stop me speaking to a murderer – even though he might murder me and save you the trouble.”
Tomelty pulled two tins of rice pudding out of his pocket and tossed one to her. “Have fun, but not at my expense. I don’t want the poor sod stepping up his adrenalin every time he sees me. He’s never experienced anything like you, he’ll believe whatever you like to tell him.”
Marise snuggled into the crook of her elbow. “Are you afraid of him?”
“Leave him alone.”
“Because he’s dangerous?”
“Because we’ve got to live here. Because you’re a kindle and he’s a married old man with grown children.”
Marise lay down on the couch. It had become a favourite place of hers now that Tomelty and Uncle Fred had rubbed the unknown people off. She could smell Uncle Fred’s tobacco crumbs and Tomelty’s hair-gum among the dust. “He’s not so old. And he’s got two women. Did he tell you about them? He keeps them in the country, two sisters, just like the last time.”
Tomelty put down his tin of rice. His nose blanched from the nostrils, whitened and swelled, like an onion Marise thought, his angry nose was the shape of an onion.
She got up to look in the mirror – seeing other people’s faces as things made her wonder how her own might be seen. But there was no part of it that looked like something else, not as else as a jug or a loaf or an onion.
“Listen to me, this is what John Brown did and you’re going to think about it. He chopped Miss Fran Whybrow into pieces. She was a big woman, she weighed twelve stone and he cut her into little bits as big as your pinkie. He made Miss Elvie help him and she was the one who cried over flies on fly-paper, she was so sensitive she couldn’t bear to see them kick. He made her chop up her own sister. Do me a favour, think about that, remember there was more to it than fingers and toes, there was the head and he wouldn’t get that off in a hurry – ask any butcher – and he scraped up the brains, they’re slippery, brains are – can you see Ralph Shilling doing that?”
Marise picked up his tin and the spoon. “I think I like this better than real rice pudding.”
6
The cat came back. One evening it was waiting for him as though nothing had happened. Perhaps nothing had happened to the cat, it had all been happening to Ralph.
He was neither glad nor sorry to see it, merely surprised that the routine should persist, or try to, because there was no longer any routine, only recurring gestures. The cat rose to greet him, ironic as ever, but he was not sure whether it could still serve his purpose. He wasn’t sure what his purpose now was. Why should he take it back anyway? It would go off again at any time, without warning, and come back or not come back. What sort of man let himself be picked up and dropped at the whim of a cat?
He sat down and lit a cigarette. He was beginning to need cigarettes, positively to grope for them whenever he paused. In the night he paused in his sleep and smoked two or three. What Bertha would say if he did that at Thorne – she was a light sleeper, she heard the dew drop – he could guess. He was bound to wake in the night, he probably wouldn’t sleep at all, would lie thinking with Bertha beside him. With Bertha beside him, what could he think?
The cat sank on its forepaws, elbows up. It looked away, not soliciting. Sometimes he stopped fretting and drifted between fact and fancy, one nugget of fact to a welter of fancies. No use questioning the fancies, they were laughable at best, and at worst they tickled a sense that was not of fun. Tomorrow he would go to Thorne, for no reason except that he went on Fridays. It was the only reason he needed – everything had to look the same. He had the ridiculous feeling that the cat knew all that had happened, like God it turned and gazed at him over its elbows. It knew, but it was outside moral judgment.
When she knocked at his door and he opened it and saw her standing there he could not believe his eyes, no matter how often he saw her he would never be prepared for the revelation.
“Has the cat come back?” She was panting slightly and the soft sound of her breath was as private as a whisper between them. “I was worried, I had to come and see.”
Her two hands were spread on her chest and it occurred to him, with joy and dismay, that she was a little frightened. He wanted to take her hands and bring her gently against his shoulder.
“I was worried,” she said again. “I think of animals like I think of people. Suppose the cat is lost, I thought, lying hurt in some horrible place, I’d die if it was me. Jack says I have no stamina. Are you going to ask me in?”
“Of course –”
He had thought of her here, sometimes he thought that it would be in this room that he would first touch her.
“It’s bigger.” She looked about. “It’s not what I expected. There’s nothing of you in it. You don’t want to be remembered, do you?”
“I don’t mind.”
He minded the way the cat was watching, confederating with them both and he furiously lifted his hand to it.
“Don’t.” She took his hand in hers. He had been waiting for her touch, it shocked down his arm and flustered him, his blood thumped and his heart ran cold and only the soles of his feet remained personal. “I want to be friends with it. What is its name?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you call? You have to call something.”
“Put. Put, put, put.”
She gave him back his hand and said gravely, “You like to hurt. Of course you’re cruel.” She wasn’t accusing or condemning, he thought he observed a certain satisfaction.
“I’d never hurt you.”
“Yes you would. I’d be the one to hurt.” She stooped to flick her fingers at the cat. “What does it play with?”
“Be careful, it scratches.”
“Be careful, be careful,” she mimicked. “What good will that do? It won’t stop what has to happen.” She turned to look at him. “You’re careful but you’re not careful of anything, like Jack – Jack’s careful of me. He won’t let me out, he’s afraid of people looking at me.”
“Afraid?”
“They might see something he can’t.”
Ralph understood that. Tomelty saw so little that almost anyone else would be able to see more. It was criminal to keep her a prisoner but Ralph understood that too. If she were legally his as she was Tomelty’s, he would go to lengths, perhaps criminal lengths, to keep other men’s eyes off her. Yes, he thought,
letting his own dwell, he would want to hoard her.
“Have you a photograph of your wife?” Nothing on the mantelpiece was his, except the clock. “Jack carries a picture of me in his wallet.”
“There’s something I must tell you.”
She sat down and folded her hands and when she looked up at him his heart ached. Like a drowning man he saw a series of pictures and his were of trampled snow, broken flowers, slaughtered lambs.
“I’m not a murderer,” he said, “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“Jack’s written ‘Gipsy Moth’ on the back of my picture. He calls me ‘Gipsy’. I expect you’ve killed moths, haven’t you?”
He couldn’t tell what she was asking. Of course it was inconceivable that he should know anything about the working of her mind but he must try to show her the working of his.
“I’m not John Brown.”
“No.” There was no meaning in it, she was not saying no and meaning yes, she certainly was not meaning no, she was just saying the word – “I should like to see a picture of your wife and her sister –” and having said it, she put the subject aside. Well, he knew what that meant, it meant that she could not agree and was reserving her opinion. What opinion did she have? “I want to see if they look like I expect.”
He took a step towards her. “Don’t expect anything. I’m Ralph Shilling, I’ve never done anything.”
Her eyes moved sideways and upwards in her serious face and she chanted, “Ralph Shilling, there’s no Ralph Shilling –” putting her hand out to him to bring him into the joke. “I like looking at pictures but you haven’t any, so you must tell me everything. About Emmy first.”
“I know what you think of me. Your husband told me.”
“Jack doesn’t know what I think. Nobody does.” She had eyes of a beautiful wetness, with the limpidity of tears but no brine. When he looked into them he felt himself swimming. “Is Emmy kind too?”
He turned away. “I must feed the cat.”
She followed him into the kitchen, it amused her to see his cupboard stocked with tins. She picked them up and read the labels. “They’re all spaghetti and pilchards.”
“I like spaghetti and the cat likes pilchards.”
“You go to the shop and buy them –” She watched him empty the contents of a tin – “and you cut up the cat’s dinner and you wash its plate –”
She spoke as if that were only the half of it. Knife and fork in hand he said stubbornly, “I’m not John Brown.”
“I don’t care who you are. You seem to think it matters, but you only live upstairs and anyone will do for that.” Her scorn lacerated him, he bent over his plate of fish, chopping. “What a fuss! Who is John Brown? Why shouldn’t you be him? John Brown Shilling, the man who feeds cats.” This time she was not offering to share the joke.
Ralph put down the cat’s food. It rose and came to the dish.
“Oh look, it trusts you. I wish I had a friend like that. I had to leave all my friends behind. I only have Barbra now.”
“Barbra?”
“You remember her, the one with her insides out. She was all I had time to snatch up when we ran away. We had to leave in a hurry, there was a man concentrating on me and Jack was afraid.”
“Concentrating?”
“Like you are.” She spoke without coquetry and he was grateful, gratitude swallowed up all the other feelings he had been having and left him hopelessly indebted. “He was only a boy, there was no need to run away. I was just being kind, but Jack doesn’t understand kindness, he thinks there’s only one thing between men and women.”
“Suppose,” Ralph said fearfully, “suppose he takes you away from here?”
“You’d follow, wouldn’t you?”
It struck Ralph first that that might be true, then came to him forcibly that it was true. He wondered was she condoning or asking – might she actually be asking him to follow her?
“I expect he knew you were here and that’s why he brought me.”
“Why?” echoed Ralph. It was dizzying, finding himself home and dry at one minute and at sea the next. He struggled to keep afloat. “You’re frightened of him, but you needn’t be, he’s only human –” “inferior human” he did not add, for her sake – “he doesn’t own you.” But if she thought he did, by God, he did.
“He’s jealous of you.”
“Jealous of me?”
“Well whoever heard of Jack Tomelty? Or Ralph Shilling?”
*
Ralph had never before looked at himself with passionate detachment, nor had he looked so often out of the corner of his eye. He found that he could occasionally surprise an absolutely unfathomable expression on his face and stared at it, trying to read a meaning. He realised that whereas other people knew his face, he was merely used to it.
Bertha certainly knew it. He recalled the day after they had first met, just the day after, he caught a cold from the drenching on the ferry and she had said, “It’s made your lips all puffy.” How was she able to tell, on so short an acquaintance, if his lips were puffy or normal?
Emmy had said, “I don’t know what you must think of us, acting so stupidly.” Emmy had been so sure what he thought of her. But Bertha knew his face, she watched it with constancy and he had grown used to finding her turned to him. She was watching for confirmation, of course, but was she ever surprised?
He found that he had written down an equation:
R.S. = a Shilling
J.B. = ?
R.S. + J.B. = M.
It wasn’t much of an equation but it gave an unequivocal answer. Not that he accepted it, he was merely enquiring about the general principle.
Krassner was the only person he could enquire of, Krassner was an authority. How to bring up the question was the problem – without bringing out the smuttier-than-thou in Krassner.
He called him into his office and asked him about an invoice, choosing the first name that came into his head.
“It’s settled,” said Krassner. “You put the cheque through yourself.” He sat on the edge of Ralph’s desk. “Worrying, are you? What a pity you can’t bug me, plant a little radio button somewhere – in my navel, perhaps, so that you could listen in to everything, including my stomach rumbles.”
“It’s time we were thinking about the catalogue.”
“I don’t have to think about it until you’ve got out a dummy.”
“I think we should try to keep the costs down.”
“That’s up to you.” There was a silence while Krassner shot back his cuff and looked at his wrist. He smiled at Ralph. “I keep forgetting my watch has gone.”
“You’re lucky not to have a wife – it’s the first thing she’d notice.”
“Sensible, not lucky.”
“You think you know a lot about women, don’t you? Tell me,” said Ralph, “would they rather a man was bad than ordinary?”
Krassner raised his eyebrows. “If you mean do they prefer villains – yes, they do.”
“Really bad, I mean – a murderer, say. Would they prefer a man to be a murderer than a nobody?”
Krassner said good-naturedly, “Do you really need to know?”
“I want to know what you think. I have my own ideas.”
“Who is she?” Who are you going to do murder for?”
“It isn’t meant to be funny.”
“Funny? It’s elementary. Where have you been all your life that you have to ask a question like that?”
“I said I have my own ideas. But you think – even a pure woman?”
“The pure ones are the worst.”
Ralph now saw what a fool he was to seek an answer merely because it could be given, and without taking into account from whence it would be coming.
“Tell you what, old boy, if you’re going to do murder for her, kill two birds with one stone and murder Pecry.”
Ralph recalled Tomelty saying, “Women enjoy a bit of dirt”. Krassner and Tomelty were pot and kettle, he saw that what th
ey both had was indiscrimination, not authority.
Questions got the answers they deserved, but there could be no harm, surely, in wanting to know what sort of man this John Brown was. Conjecture would not do.
“Murder trials?” said the young woman at the library. “We have hundreds.”
“A man –” he found himself reluctant to speak the name – “was tried for murder and acquitted. If you’ll tell me where that kind of thing is on the shelves I’ll look myself.”
“What kind of thing? We don’t index murder qua murder. Was it political or psychotic? Crime passionel? Who did he murder?”
“Two women, but it wasn’t proved –”
“Sexual. Has the case been written up? Not all of them are. There has to be something to peg it on, it’s the peg that matters in these fictionalised accounts.”
“I don’t want fiction, I want facts.”
“Then you’d better look at the newspaper reports.”
“Yes, of course, the newspapers.”
“Although it’s arguable –” the young woman seemed ready to argue – “whether facts alone bring you nearer the truth. There’s a lot in how they are presented, they can be misrepresented in newspapers. Leaving aside incompetence and human frailty, journalists make up their minds too, you know, without being qualified to – in fact being well qualified not to. Which is why some people prefer digests. What was the name?”
“I’ll try the newspapers. Shall I find them in the Reading Room?”
“In our Reading Room you’ll find the current week’s papers on the desks and last week’s on battens.”
“This would have been about fifteen years ago.”
“The London Library,” said the young woman, “if you’re a member.”
“I’m not –”
“Newspaper offices keep files of their back issues.”
Looking for John Brown he realised that world events had to be geared down to the personal to be felt, and to be felt at this distance of time they had to be geared to personal history.