by Burke, John
Someone Lying, Someone Dying
John Burke
© John Burke 1968
John Burke has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
First published in 1968 by John Long Publishing Ltd.
This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.
Table of Contents
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17.
They stood at the rear window of the bare, bright room and watched dust and smoke rising from the demolition site a hundred yards away. In here was the smell of new paint. Wood and metal and the white ceiling shone. Out there, the tired grey walls flinched and sagged under the assault of picks, ropes and a bulldozer. Here a beginning; there an end.
Martin said: “I suppose they’ll be doing that to this place, one day.”
“We haven’t even moved in yet!” Brigid protested.
Men balanced on the raw ends of girders, chopping out bricks. After a while they attached a rope from a bulldozer and scrambled away. The throb of the engine pounded across the site and made the windows of the flat vibrate. The yellow monster strained like a massive horse against the taut rope. It shuddered forward, churning up the earth, until the wall of the building fell gently outwards and dissolved. A breeze blew up the hill from the sea, puffing a pall of dust in slow motion across the ruins. Grit settled on the blossom of the two trees at the end of the garden. Once there had been a smooth lawn; now there was a mish-mash of bulldozer and heavy lorry tracks.
Brigid glanced at Martin. He was absorbed in the remorseless process of destruction.
She liked to have the chance, every now and then, of studying him when he wasn’t aware of her. She tried to see him as a stranger; tried to say ‘There’s a rather gorgeous man, I wonder what he’s like, I wonder what his mouth is like when he smiles — rather stiff now, as though he’s got something on his mind and is very, very slightly talking to himself, but I bet I could make those lips soften — and I wonder what he’s thinking about and whether I can attract his attention and make him think about me.’
He was frowning. From here she couldn’t see his right eye but she knew that it would be wider than the left, quizzical and demanding, just as it was when he was about to bend over his microscope and watch weird little things wiggling about on a glass slide. Now he watched the men swarming over the demolition site. With her own eyes shut she could lovingly have traced the line of his profile: the oddly jutting, aggressive peak of fair hair above his bony forehead, and the almost Etruscan nose, dominating yet not quite defeating the mouth she now knew so well.
Brigid felt a twinge of impatience. She had had her fill of contemplation. It was time he came back to her. If he was thinking anything interesting, she wanted him to share it with her.
Perhaps, with that self-mocking solemnity which was so much a part of him, he was seeing a parallel between their own lives and the activity outside. Brigid was growing into the habit of anticipating his thoughts and trying to match them. Our separate lives, she now ventured, each being pulled apart so that something fresh can be constructed on the debris. A month from now we’ll be living here. Living together.
She had said this over and over again to herself recently and still found it hard to believe. Living here. With Martin. Married, and settled in this flat. Part of each other, and each of them a part of something else.
She longed to make him turn to her and smile. At the same time she felt a quickening of fear at the prospect of surrendering her freedom. She didn’t have to pretend that he was a stranger: he was a stranger. To him perhaps she, too, was a stranger.
She said: “Everything seems to be going ahead so … so implacably, doesn’t it?”
“Everything?” he said vaguely, still engrossed.
“The arrangements,” she said: “the presents and the cake and the reception and the new carpets and the furniture and the business of turning on the electricity and the gas and … oh, everything.”
He nodded.
“Do you want to turn back before it’s too late?” said Brigid.
Flame licked up through the emptiness of a window. Workmen threw planks and the jagged remains of panelling on to a fire carefully shielded in the open cellars of the house. The writhing pattern of flame, smoke and dust changed ceaselessly.
At last Martin faced her, giving her his full attention and speaking only after the usual fractional delay during which he analysed what had been said to him. “I don’t think I could be rebuilt as a separate entity now.”
“Not a very romantic way of putting it.”
He slid his arm round her. They leaned against the pillar that divided the long window into two segments and lazily swayed to face the room.
Their flat was on the second floor of a new block built by her father’s company. The sitting room which had looked so small on the plan and not much larger while the block was being erected now showed up as a spacious, well-proportioned room. It ran from front to back of the building and had one attractively eccentric arm turning sharply along the rear wall, enfolding a box room. In an apparently confined space the architect had been able to fit two bedrooms, bathroom, kitchen and this inner box room. At the moment it was all, really, an abstraction. Brigid and Martin were standing not in their home but in what the planners called ‘living space’ — well designed and organised, but nothing more than space in which no-one had yet done any living.
Carpets and furniture would make a difference when they arrived. The wear and tear of everyday existence would make a difference.
Being married to Martin and living here with him would make a difference.
Brigid said: “Where shall we put the couch — along that wall, or opposite the heater?”
“I don’t mind.”
“But where do you think it would fit in best?”
Martin gave this a few seconds’ reluctant consideration and said: “Wherever we put it, you’ll be moving it around for weeks before we finally settle.”
“Will I?”
“Women do.”
“Do they?”
“So I’ve been told. When they’re first married. And once a year at spring-cleaning time.”
“Is this the voice of personal experience? Your mother has an annual shake-up?”
“No, it doesn’t happen to us, I’ll admit. Mum likes things to stay in their appointed places.” He spoke of his mother with a fondness quite free from uncomfortable sentimentality. “She keeps our rooms the way they were when my father was alive. It’s just that she prefers them that way.”
“And mine…”
“Oh, yours,” he said automatically, then stopped.
“What about her?”
“It’s rather different.”
“Why is it different?”
“Every time I visit you she’s got something new.”
“Martin, don’t exaggerate.”
“I have a picture of her falling for something in a shop, ordering it to be delivered at an exact time on a certain day, and then hurrying home to work out her plan of campaign. This piece to be moved over there, that piece over here. Bring this forward, send that back to the rear. And in marches the latest acquisition, slap into the space reserved for it. Banishment for some, advancement for others. For a few months, anyway.”
“Martin!”
He let his arm slip away from her shoulders and pa
ced out into the middle of the room, swerving on the way as though to avoid an invisible table.
“There isn’t any point in discussing where we’ll put our things” — his hand sketched shapes in emptiness, conjuring up a sideboard against one wall and then dismissing it — “when you know perfectly well she’ll make all the decisions for us.”
“She only wants to help.”
“I know. I just wish…”
“What?”
“Oh, it’s nothing. They’re both being awfully good, I know. Don’t mind me.” He had reached the window at the other end of the room. His shape was a blur against the dazzle of the sky and the reflected light from the sea and white houses below.
Brigid said: “But I do mind you.”
All the other fears and hesitancies about their marriage were nothing. She was sure everyone had silly little doubts at a time like this. Everyone fluttered and panicked during these last few weeks. But in her case there was this deeper disturbance. She didn’t want the surface ripples to be lashed at some unpredictable time into a storm.
Her father ran the largest firm of building contractors in Lurgate. It was indeed the largest for many miles around. He was Johnson of Johnson’s, son of the founder. In one of his more prickly moods Martin had said that if Arthur Johnson didn’t own half the town he had at least built half of it, and if he had his way he’d pull down the other half and start all over again. It was only natural that when his daughter wanted to get married he should set aside for her and her husband one of the best flats in a new block. From the back windows they would look out on a stretch of communal garden trimly enclosed by garages, and, when the demolition was completed and a new building erected, on another block of bright new flats just close enough to be neighbourly but not so close as to be oppressive. From the front they could look over the roofs tilting down towards the sea. It was every young married couple’s dream. Silly not to be grateful; silly not to accept with a good grace.
Brigid followed Martin and stood beside him as he stared down on the steep streets which, in this haze of April light, seemed to plunge straight into the water.
“I do mind,” she insisted. “Darling, you’re not still being bristly about it, are you? I thought we’d gone over all that. I thought it was all right now.”
Many times they had gone over it. Was it going to be always with them? He accepted the logic of it all but his stubborn pride wouldn’t give him any peace. He had a good job, but not good enough to pay for a place like this. And if he couldn’t pay for it himself he wasn’t happy at the idea of living in it. Brigid’s father had been very tactful, appreciating that Martin should want to support Brigid in his own way; and Martin liked him for it and did his best to accept, but could not help scratching away at this irritation.
“If I find a better job,” he said; “if we have to move away…”
“If we have to move away, we move. But what’s wrong with enjoying ourselves here while we’re here? Mummy and Daddy would buy us an expensive present whatever happened. If it wasn’t this flat, it’d be something else.”
“I suppose so.” Martin put his forehead against the glass. “I’d be pretty unreasonable if I condemned you to life in a cheap back room just because I felt snooty about taking things from your parents. No reason why you should suffer from my pangs of conscience.”
“Conscience?”
“Oh, you know what I mean. There’ll be all the sour old tongues in the town saying I’m on to a good thing…”
“And aren’t you?” She took his hand. His fingers tightened on hers.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m on to a good thing. You. Because it’s you I’m in love with, and nothing to do with anything else.”
“So what does anyone else’s opinion matter?”
Martin glared down at the streets as though daring anyone to whisper.
The arc of the sea-front road curled out to the end of the bluff, a plump arm of land sheltering the bay. The short pier bisected the arc. Sunlight sparked from the ornate roof of the pavilion. The tide was out and the sand was golden but there were few people on it: the season would not begin in earnest until Easter. A fortnight from now there would be a tangle of cars and coaches on the sea front. Now a blue saloon heading in to the town was able to reach the foot of the hill without halts or hesitations. It turned up towards the block of flats. Brigid recognised it before Martin spoke. “Here’s your mother.”
His fingers gripped painfully.
Brigid said: “Darling, she only wants us to be comfortable. She just wants to help.”
“I know I promise to be good.”
They waited, hearing the car stop below and then the tap of footsteps up the echoing staircase. A key scraped in the lock. They were standing shoulder to shoulder as though awaiting an attack when Brigid’s mother came in.
Nell Johnson was a slim woman with high cheekbones, long fingers, and ankles which might have been described as bony if they had not been so fine. During her schooldays Brigid had envied her mother — those grisly speech-days when she had felt so lumpy in her chocolate-coloured uniform and Nell had looked so cool and confident and so much smarter than the other mothers! — and she still envied her. Nell’s hair had gone grey early, but even this had proved to be an asset. The two shades of iron were so sharply defined in narrow streaks across her head that jealous friends often asked where she managed to get such skilful tinting done.
Now she kissed Brigid and turned her cheek for Martin to give it a ritual peck.
She said: “You’re still set on having that deep blue carpet for the bedroom?”
Discussing the matter at home last night, Brigid had been almost persuaded that the subject should be opened again with Martin. Now, glancing at him, she knew that it simply had to be the deep blue carpet.
“Yes,” she said.
“But I thought…”
“Deep blue,” said Brigid shortly.
“All right, dear.” said Nell. “No need to snap at me.” Her voice went up a few tones, as it invariably did when she wanted to establish a rapport with Martin. “We can see who’s going to make the decisions in this house if we’re not careful, can’t we? I hope you’re prepared to be firm, Martin.”
“When necessary.” He managed a smile.
“Oh, it’ll be necessary. You may not have seen Brigid’s temper yet, but you will. Dear me, you will. Have I told you about the time we put a new picture up in her room — when she was only five — and just because we hadn’t consulted her…”
“Yes, Mummy,” said Brigid, “you have told him. At least three times.”
Nell shrugged. “Oh, well.” She had come in carrying a bulky brown envelope. Now she opened it and took out a swatch of material. “If you’re having the green carpet in this room…”
“That’s fixed, too,” said Brigid tensely. “So I understood. And when I saw this curtain material, I felt you ought to have a look at it.” She held it up to the light. “Don’t you think it would go beautifully?”
Martin moved casually away down the room, back to the window overlooking the demolition site.
The material was mottled green, sprinkled with uneven black blobs. The essence of the pattern was its very lack of pattern. Brigid knew that they would be able to live with it.
“Just right,” she admitted.
Nell raised one brindled eyebrow in the direction of Martin. She was silently asking if they had to wait for his approval. When he did not respond she looked round the room. It was surely the twentieth time — or the hundredth? — that she had studied this room. Fond as Brigid was of her mother, she began to share Martin’s alarm. She didn’t want Nell to impose herself on this flat, any more than she wanted Martin’s mother to move in and run it for them. They would sooner make their own mistakes. Better to solve problems themselves and to flounder through the difficulties than to have everything solved for them. It could be fun. Even if it wasn’t, the flat would be theirs and the problems and solutions theirs.
“If I were you…” Nell caught Brigid’s eyes and stopped. She hesitated, then tapped down the room towards Martin, her high heels twitching a dozen echoes into being and losing them in a fraction of a second. She stood beside him, anxious to enlist his sympathy and anxious for both of them to relax in each other’s company. Her eyes followed the direction of his gaze. She said: “It’s frightening how quickly a century can be wiped out, isn’t it? All those people who lived there — all gone.”
Martin’s wry, appreciative smile was an unexpected response. She had struck the right note.
“All their memories gone, too,” he said. “No ghosts. No echoes.”
“Just as well, perhaps. I think that house held some unhappy echoes.”
Brigid joined them at the window. The gaping hole of the cellar seemed larger. Another section had been exposed to the sky, and on the far side of the fire the men were clearing another heap of rubble away. It was hard to believe that this ravaged patch of land could ever provide a level base for a new building.
“Some local scandal?” Brigid asked idly.
“One that we were involved in, actually. Well … your grandfather, anyway. Before the first world war. The firm used to be Blythe and Johnson then. That was the Blythe house — that mess over there. Blythe cleared out — something shady, I think — and his name was dropped from the firm. I know your father was always being told by his father how hard he’d have to get the company back on its feet.” Nell held the curtain material up again and picked abstractedly at it with a fingernail. “Whatever it was,” she said, “it was all over long ago.”
A workman on the crumbling edge of the cellar waved across the site and shouted something. Two of his mates scrambled over the rubble and stood beside him. Smoke from the fire obscured them for a moment but when it had drifted away they were still standing there. Another man joined them and leaned on his pick. They might have been contemplating a hole in the road, philosophising about it.
“A good job your father can’t see them,” said Nell. “That’s how they earn their money nowadays — watching faces in the fire.”