Death Lives Next Door

by Gwendoline Butler

  “I meant in relation to Marion.”

  But the Professor had gone back to Marion’s marriage. “My goodness, she was sitting on a delayed action bomb there all right,” he said almost with satisfaction.

  “What do you mean?” asked Ezra, hastily seeing that the Professor was about to disappear. He was like the Cheshire cat and could do it in stages.

  “Well, old Francis was a queer cuss. Couldn’t tell how he’d really take to marriage. Specially with Marion, a dear girl but a strong character.” His head was still visible but his legs had disappeared. “But there it was, they had a few weeks of sheer happiness (and that counts, my dear fellow), and then he went. Perhaps for Marion it was the best thing.” He spoke wistfully. “I was in love with her myself a little, all prepared to be sentimental about her when she got back. She soon shattered that. You can’t be sentimental about Marion, she’s alive, tough, real, it’s her great strength. That’s where she scores over poor weak shadows like me. Don’t you make that mistake.”

  Marion, working away at her books, suddenly looked up and met Joyo’s eyes in the gilt looking-glass.

  “Hullo. I kept out of the way while you had them with you, although I like to get a look at them. Nice young couple. The girl’s quite good-looking.”

  Joyo hummed a few bars of music.

  “Yes, we’ve met once or twice. That surprise you? Oh, she didn’t know who I was. I never say I’m your cousin or anything silly like that. Because it would be silly. Daresay people wouldn’t believe it. Not so much alike are we?” She said it complacently.

  Next door the watcher was placidly eating his supper.

  Joyo began to hum; she was really a very happy woman, but unhappily, if she was happy, Marion was sad: they were ill-assorted companions. However Joyo was kind at heart and she tried, as far as was possible with her own life, to keep Marion happy. So she stopped singing.

  “I’ll be out for some time,” she announced. “I’ve been out a lot lately.” Thank God, she added under her breath.

  Ever since the days of the Australian, Joyo had had a slight Australian accent; sometimes she wasn’t quite sure herself whether she wasn’t perhaps half-Australian. As well as the accent she had tried out a heavy sun-tan make-up and a slight roll to her walk which to her spelt wide open spaces, sheep-runs and horses, but which had really been peculiar to her Australian gallant, a factory worker from Sydney. This was how Joyo built up her character, like a magpie, a scrap here and a scrap there.

  Joyo loved meeting people, but living her circumscribed life (which she blamed Marion for), meeting people was just what she didn’t do. She had to arrange it.

  She joined an Art Group. It was a good class and Joyo, to her pleasure, showed some skill in draught-manship and drawing from life; the teacher said she had “a strong sense of composition”, a quality which Joyo felt she could usually be relied upon to show. So at the beginning of the art course Joyo was happy; she couldn’t go regularly, often didn’t appear for weeks (Marion’s fault again: how she hated Marion when she didn’t get out for weeks). But no one seemed to mind. But as the course progressed the teacher said that it was time for their pictures to show their imagination and their experience. This halted Joyo: she had no imagination to speak of, and she was sharp enough to see that if she started drawing upon her experiences then some very funny things might pop out.

  So she gave up art and turned to cookery. But from this encounter was born Joyo the artist, a creature not making a very frequent appearance but there in the background and giving Joyo much reassurance. She felt it raised her standing.

  The cookery class was not really so much her cup of tea; she felt out of place in it, although she suspected it was used by other lonely women as a meeting place, as something to fill in time, and as a substitute for the kitchens and hungry families they didn’t have. Probably there were some happy normal women there, but if so she didn’t think they stayed; even the instructress had a pinched anxious look and an invalid mother. There were exceptions, of course. At the first class one woman confided in Joyo that she was a spinster about to marry a widower with two young boys. She never appeared again but the idea attracted Joyo; it was an appealing reason for going to cookery lessons, it was a convincing reason, it was such a right reason, especially for Joyo who really had no reason at all for going. And after this Joyo was a woman shortly (she was acute enough to leave the actual time scheme vague) to marry a widower with two sons. She even had names for the little boys, John and Peter; the husband remained a submerged figure, which was frankly how she preferred him to be. In fact, if she could have expressed a wish in the matter it would have been that she would rather have had daughters.

  She did not make any friends at the class, though, in fact she only ever had one conversation, except with the teacher. The woman working at the next bench spoke to her one afternoon as they gloomily concocted a supper savoury. (Joyo had unavoidably been absent for several weeks so she had missed the breakfast beanfeast, the lunch-time snack, and the tea-time tasties.)

  “The food here is what I call fidgety,” said the woman; she was tall, grey-haired and certainly looked as though she knew all about cooking. “I came here because I thought it might give me some ideas, I get so bored with my food, but I don’t think it has. Not ones I can use, anyway.” She sighed as she grated cheese, there was always a good deal of grated cheese in use at this class. “I read a cookery book by a woman writer last night, such a nice cookery book, full of food you’d love to eat, but all needing a good morning’s fiddling work, and an empty kitchen, and peace.”

  Joyo sighed in sympathy, although heaven knew that there was enough emptiness in her life even if not peace.

  The woman went on: “I’ve come to the conclusion that all women who write cookery books are either single or else childless women with husbands who only need a good meal every other day or so. Not women with families who want feeding, day in and day out, with four square meals a day. You couldn’t love food like they do if you saw so much of it.” She slapped down a piece of puff pastry. “I tell you, I just long for the day we five on little pills. Four lovely little pills a day. That’ll be emancipation. Better than the vote or equal pay. You know what it is, we’re archaic about food, cave-men really, it’s time we gave our minds to working out an efficient substitute.”

  “I just love apple pie,” said Joyo wistfully.

  This woman, too, was never seen again. Off looking for her food substitute probably. And after a bit Joyo gave up the class; no one spoke to her, she didn’t like the food, and she couldn’t get out very much owing to strained relations with Marion, so there didn’t seem a lot of point in going on.

  Joyo did not regret the cooking classes. She had spent the war, together with friend Marion, working in the canteen of a large factory and that had been enough for her. Marion could say what she liked but she herself had no high opinion of the dignity of labour; in her opinion it was a phrase used mostly by people who never did any. She considered, too, that Marion had avoided a good deal of the actual kitchen work and foisted it off on to her, Joyo.

  What she did regret was having made no friends. Unaware of her own true character as a sort of vampire on other people’s spirits, Joyo saw it as all their fault that they did not respond. She had bad luck, was how she put it. Occasionally, in a flash of honesty, Joyo did admit that she found human relationships immensely difficult.

  Take her life with Marion, now. At the moment she and Marion were in a bad patch. Joyo was annoyed that Marion was consulting a doctor for her headaches; she considered that Marion was a bit of an old baby. What were a few headaches? They were a nuisance for Marion perhaps, but the truth was that for Joyo they represented an opportunity for escape; they distracted Marion’s attention and with Marion’s attention off her for a little while she could disport herself as she pleased. So once again their interests clashed. This in itself was nothing new: they had clashed before and they would clash again, as they had done ever s
ince Joyo had read an article in a highly coloured women’s magazine about the work and life of the servant of a famous actress, there had been pictures of the woman at work in the kitchen, at the dressing table and in the theatre. Joyo had enjoyed it and at once identified herself with the woman. ‘Venetia Stuart’s other self’ said the magazine, and to Joyo this was just the expression she was looking for. ‘Marion Manning’s other self.’ The phrase had class. The clash between Marion and Joyo was nothing new, but for the first time Joyo began to see that if she found Marion tiresome and in the way then so must Marion find her.

  Marion’s feeling for Ezra was undoubtedly putting pressure on Marion and making everything altogether much trickier for Joyo. She didn’t really want to get in the way of any plans Marion had about Ezra, but she felt she had her own life to consider. And if she didn’t consider it no one else was going to. A crisis was blowing up between Ezra and Marion, and nothing that she or anyone else could do was going to stop it. It was in the course of nature and it was going to happen because there was a young girl with a slim waist and a fine skin who had caught Ezra’s mind. Marion couldn’t hold out against that. Wouldn’t want to probably, considered Joyo somewhat scornfully.

  For all that, the real Joyo, on whom all the other Joyo’s were accretions, had crystallised in the canteen during the war. She had detested much of it, but never again had she found the same freedom. Joyo had loathed the long hours, the dullness, the heavy work of the canteen. “I’m not cut out for this,” she used to moan, and hated Marion for it; rightly, no doubt. But she had been excited by the people she met. And like a little girl from the country it had gone to her head and she had let the situation get out of control. One rôle that Joyo could honestly, genuinely have played, was that of the unhappily married woman, and it was the one she was frightened of playing. Joyo, who knew really very little fear, because she had after all, so little to lose, was afraid of that.

  At first, during the war, before she had a place of her own, she had lived with Marion. They were only just beginning their relationship with each other then. It had started after the bomb incident, at which they had first met. “If met is the word,” thought Joyo with amusement. “Poor old Marion, I suppose she had me coming to her.” Just lately for the first time she had been wondering if it was such a help to Marion to have her around as she had previously supposed. Heavens, supposing the woman was being kind to her. That would be a joke all right. Her war-time landlady had certainly not been kind. Joyo could still remember the look on her face, not a nice look at all, and she had shooed Joyo out of her house pretty smartly. Joyo had been aggrieved: “Treated me as if I was a bad girl.”

  This period had also another significance: Joyo had heard of the phrase ‘traumatic experience’ (anyone moving in the cirle of Marion’s friends was bound to do so) and considered that she had had one.

  There was a basement store-room beneath the canteen where Joyo worked; it contained sacks of dried food, tins of fruit, vegetables and meat, and all the stuff that could find no home elsewhere. Joyo was obliged by her work to go down there at intervals. She liked it—it was dim, warm and quiet. It was not, however, as solitary and unfrequented as you might have thought at first; other people found it dim, warm and quiet, too. Many times Joyo saw a figure move back into the shadows or quietly close one of the further doors. She kept her own counsel, she was learning, she soon understood that the basement was used for the meetings, assignations, and intrigues that are a part of the life of any large institution, especially in war-time.

  Among the frequenters of the basement was a stout red-cheeked young woman whom Joyo identified as being one of the clerks in the Accounting Department; her companion was a much older man whom Joyo did not know. She never did discover who he was, but so many thousands worked in the factory that this was not to be wondered at. She did discover that he was married for she saw him one day with his wife, a woman of Joyo’s age and more. She looked a sick woman but perhaps she was only an unhappy one. Then followed a period of a few months when Joyo was not about and when she saw the girl from the Accounts again she was still stout but no longer red-cheeked and there was no more bounce to her. Joyo, sharp-eyed as usual, saw that the man had another companion now.

  One day Joyo, descending to the basement to collect a sack of flour found the girl and the man there again. This time there was no fear of them minding her; they were dead. The girl had shot herself and her companion. Guns were not so difficult to come by in 1944, and at point-blank range who could miss?

  The man was face downwards on the floor and the girl close by. She was curled on a camp-bed, her head flung back on an old army blanket and her hands free. For the moment there was the quiet, the peace, the dignity even of death.

  But soon, if these two were left untouched, then sordidness would creep back; the bodies would stiffen and contract, the features change, the blood darken; the disarranged clothes become disordered and disgraceful. The peace of death is in one way an illusion; it is only a momentary stage on the way to disintegration.

  It was all a severe shock to Joyo whose own life was far from tranquil at the time. But it had done one thing for her: she had seen the girl’s face, seen the look of satisfaction on it, and she had learnt from it.

  From then on she had known that there was one sure way out.

  Next door the Watcher sat placidly eating his supper in the Major’s basement dining-room. The Major, an immensely practical man where his own comfort was concerned, had long ago decided that what suited him best in the way of meals was a large late supper with lots of tea or cocoa to drink. A light tea followed by a large late supper. Tonight he and his guest were sitting at a cosy round table eating eggs and chips and drinking cocoa, a drink for which the Major had a great weakness, and indeed, as made by him, well whisked up and containing a tablespoon of rum, it was both delicious and sustaining.

  Neither was a talkative person and silence suited them both: the Major because he wanted to observe his man and the other because he wanted to think.

  The visitor looked round the Major’s peaceful room, so orderly and unorthodox, just like the Major himself. There were comfortable armchairs drawn up to a table which had been reduced to the right height by the Major himself. There were well-placed lamps, well placed by the Major’s standards that is: one directly attached to the back of his chair for reading, another attached to the skirting board by the radio and gramophone so that there need be no fumbling around in the dark for switches and records, and another on a long cord so that it could move anywhere. It was a bachelor’s house, planned, comfortable and free. The visitor looked at all this with envy and wistfulness.

  On the table were all the books the Major loved most: Pickwick Papers, Bacon’s Essays, and Kipling. He kept David Copperfield upstairs by his bed: no one cried more happily over the spiritual death of little Emily than the Major, although in his heart he disliked the girl and was surprised at Steerforth. There were a few pot plants because the Major had green fingers, and a few flower drawings. There was also a portrait photograph of his great-grandmother which had been taken by Mrs. Julia Margaret Cameron, that early photographer of genius. He had kept it because he liked Great-Grandma’s face.

  The man looked at this, and the Major wondered if it was with admiration. But he only said indifferently:

  “She must have used a terribly long exposure.”

  “She did, I believe,” said the Major blinking. “Three to seven minutes. How did you know?”

  “… Bit out of focus. You can tell she moved, it makes it … softer, somehow. Couldn’t get away with it now.”

  “I can see you know about photography.”

  The man shrugged. A look which the Major made out as one of sullenness slowly appeared on his face. Somehow it made him seem younger.

  “Yes, I am a photographer. I stay in London in the winter. Come down here in the summer to take snaps in the street. You know the sort of thing. Take the picture, give you the card, co
llect it tomorrow, no obligation to buy. I don’t think.”

  “Really? Didn’t know we had them in Oxford. No one’s ever stopped me.”

  “Oh, we shouldn’t stop gentlemen like you,” said the man with a sign of amusement.

  “Only pretty ladies, eh?”

  “Babies and dogs. Always go for them first.”

  There was a silence again between them. Perhaps the man was sorry he had said as much as he had. The Major lit his pipe and smoked placidly.

  “Have you got nice neighbours,” said the man looking towards Marion’s house; he licked his lips as if they were dry … Fellow looks damned ill, thought the Major. “I mean friends and all that?”

  “We don’t always see eye to eye.” The Major frowned. “She’s not a gardener, you know.” And then there had been the other cause for embarrassment. “You know how it is when an old bachelor and a spinster live side by side, people begin to make jokes about them making a match of it. Neither Dr. Manning nor I liked that. Not that I think of marrying. There’s only two reasons why an old chap like me marries, one is sex, and there’s precious little of that left in me I can tell you, burnt out of me, my dear chap, burnt out of me. The other’s for companionship and I shouldn’t get that from Dr. Manning. Don’t ever believe the tale that scholars are open-minded. Stiff with prejudices. Why, I took the trouble to go into the whole question with her of why we know Bacon wrote the plays attributed to that man Shakespeare and she took no notice! Said she didn’t care. Didn’t care! Not good enough, is it?”

  “Thank you for everything,” said the man suddenly. “I should get along after supper.”

  “Yes, perhaps you should,” said the Major, who was beginning to think he had better be rid of his odd visitor.

  The visitor finished his supper quietly, his thoughts absorbed with the house next door.

  He was, almost, in.

  Chapter Four

  The telephone rang in the hall next to the room where Rachel was sleeping. She lived when in Oxford in a sort of dormitory attached to her college. She had done so as an undergraduate, for her parents, although living in great comfort in Oxford itself, had turned her from the nest to live like anyone else in college. “So good for you to be independent,” they cried. Her parents, like Milton, were continually anxious to Justify the ways of God to Man. Rachel who had once hated it and had objected violently, now clung to her room, as much from habit as anything, but partly because it did indeed represent the independence she was supposed to aim at. Not that her parents were in any other way Miltonic. Her mother was very pretty and lively (she had been a Hansom) and both of them, in their rather dated Bohemianism, were a great worry to Rachel, who never knew whether they were going to turn up broke in Corfù or be run in at San Salvador for not wearing enough beach clothes.