‘I understand perfectly,’ Sam said.
‘Although I had no true feeling for Harry I had worked myself into a certain enthusiasm because I thought he loved me.’
‘It must have been hard work,’ Sam said.
Jennifer was back to her wedding night and going strong. She said: ‘I sat by the window and there was a moon. I didn’t get into bed because I wanted him to see my new nightie.’
‘Naturally,’ Sam said.
Jennifer returned to Sam for a moment. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you all this – you a perfect stranger, too. I’m not boring you, am I?’
‘Not at all,’ Sam said politely.
‘Have some more tea?’
‘Soon,’ said Sam. ‘Soon.’
‘Where was I?’ Jennifer asked.
‘You were sitting by the window and there was a moon. You hadn’t got into bed because you wanted him to see your new nightie. You had worked yourself into a certain enthusiasm.’
Jennifer laughed lightly. ‘Did I say all that?’
‘When does Harry come in?’ Sam asked her impatiently.
Her face straightened and the mirth left her. ‘At last,’ she said, ‘Harry came in.’
‘What had he been doing all this time?’ Sam said, petulantly.
‘Finding a picture of Robert,’ Jennifer said.
‘Robert!’
‘Robert,’ Jennifer repeated. ‘A photograph of my dead lover. A photograph of the father of my child. A photograph of his brother.’
‘Why did he want that?’ Sam asked.
‘That’s what I wanted to know. It wasn’t even a good photograph. He said … I hardly like to tell you what he said.’
‘I’d like to hear it,’ Sam encouraged her.
‘He said,’ she said, ‘“I’m going to hang dear Robert over our bed, dear. You are bearing his child, remember. So when I make love to you, Jenny, I want you to imagine that it’s really Robert making love to you.”’
Sam was shocked. ‘He said that?’
She nodded soberly. ‘I was going to imagine it was Robert, anyway,’ she said, ‘but I didn’t want him to imagine that I was imagining it was Robert.’
‘I should think not!’
‘And,’ said Jennifer, ‘he didn’t as much as mention my new nightie.’
‘What did you do?’ Sam asked.
‘I left him,’ she said. ‘I went round to mother’s straight away. So I never did have to imagine it was Robert and now I never shall.’
‘What a poignant story,’ Sam said.
Jennifer smiled sadly at him. ‘I knew you would understand – nobody else does. Even mother thought I should live with him. But I wouldn’t. He pestered me to go back, but I always refused. At last he even offered to take down the photograph over the bed, but it was too late.’
‘I don’t blame you,’ Sam said.
‘Abie was born,’ Jennifer said, ‘and as soon as I could I moved away to where I thought Harry would never find me. I changed my name—’
‘But he did find you?’
‘Yes. Today.’
‘Yesterday?’
‘No. Today. This morning. There was a knock on the door and there he was. Harry.’
‘What did he want?’
‘At last,’ Jennifer said, ‘he wanted me. Not on his brother’s account, either, but on his own account. He had suddenly felt a basic urge, he said. He wanted me because I was his wife.’
‘How did you feel about it?’ Sam asked.
‘I felt sick,’ said the young woman. ‘Did you see his moustache and his wavy hair?’
Sam agreed with her. ‘But when I saw him,’ he said, ‘he was dead.’
Jennifer shrugged. ‘He looked exactly the same when he was alive, except that he was vertical.’
‘What did you say to him?’ Sam asked.
‘Nothing,’ Jennifer said. ‘I hit him on the head with a milk bottle and knocked him silly.’
‘How do you mean “silly”?’
‘Silly-dilly,’ she said. ‘Bats. He went staggering up towards the heath saying he was going to find his wife.’
‘So he turned human at the last?’ Sam asked.
‘He did,’ she said. ‘But he was too late as far as I was concerned.’
‘I’ll have another cup of tea,’ Sam said.
While she was preparing it for him he sat back and thought.
MIRAGE
‘The Ship’ was a thing of stucco breeze blocks and cheap Canadian timber. It lay at anchor in its little garden amongst the trees. It lay in the heat of the summer afternoon, looking not merely becalmed but derelict. The portholes were dusty, being draped with a grey material that might have been curtain or cobweb. The paintwork was worn and cracked by the weather, unwashed and covered by the colourless, dried drippings from leaves on hundreds of past wet days. It was a bungalow that had suffered abominably from bachelors.
The three rooms that comprised the inside of this residence were stuffed with untidiness. Every possible hiding place for odds and ends had been thought of and used. Every item of furniture that nobody could ever find a use for had been gathered together in those three rooms. Outside, in the small shed, four tea chests of personal belongings, mostly junk, stood still packed, while the more treasured of these relics took pride of place in all the corners of the rooms, filling the bungalow with riverside memories spread over some thirty years. Relics that ranged from a lifebelt that had saved Albert Wiles’s life, to the suspender belt of a Deptford barmaid who had almost wrecked it. So crammed with stuff was this bungalow that only by habitual movement from room to room could the captain keep a space free for movement.
When at five o’clock on this pleasant summer afternoon Captain Wiles stepped out of this mess and muddle, looking spry and spruce, it was the miracle of the new-laid egg leaving the bowels of a scruffy old hen. For some strange reason he had taken greater pains with his personal appearance than ever before, greater even than on that famous occasion when he had set out to meet Gertie at Gravesend with the intention of cutting out his old rival, Tiger Wray. It was strange because this Miss Graveley bore no comparison to Gertie of Gravesend, who had been young, supple and red-haired. But then the captain was no longer young and supple and by this time Gertie, who had eventually married Tiger and borne him seven cubs, was even less young and supple.
These thoughts chased each other through the captain’s mind as he came to the hollyhocks of ‘The Haven’. These and other thoughts. He compared this trim little bungalow with his own. The white muslin curtains with the bright embroidery, the shining blue paintwork of the window frames and door, the organised splendour of the garden. And with it all he remembered her nice, grey eyes and her dark hair. And in his memory the old fashioned ‘bun’ vanished and instead he saw bright ribbon amongst gay but dignified curls; her eyes shone brightly and her mouth was a colour that matched the ribbon, while her cheeks were the candy-pink of the hollyhocks.
These thoughts took no ordered or conscious significance in his mind, for all his life he had thought of a woman as a woman, a house as a house, and a garden as a home for cabbages. Nothing more or less. He was a man of the world with a broad mind, human impulses and a convenient conscience; he had always found marriage entirely unnecessary. But in some vague and disquieting way the sounds of the woodlands now held a hint of wedding bells, and the captain knew that it was because his memory was lying. He knew it was the ribbon and the bright eyes and the pink cheeks.
He knocked at the door of ‘The Haven’ and then stood back with a smile on his soap-shone face and his shoulders squared, viewing his reflection approvingly in the shiny paintwork. When Miss Graveley answered his knock she did so from behind him, for she had been cutting the roses which she held in her arms.
‘Here you are, then,’ she said.
The captain swung around and his pose was wasted. He felt as if he had been caught pulling faces at himself in the mirror. Then he forgot his embarrassment and lost himsel
f in the picture of the woman as she stood framed by the porch against the garden. His memory had been perfectly accurate. There were the curls and the ribbon and the pink cheeks and the bright eyes. And there, also, far beyond the buzzing of bees and the bored chirp of a bird, were those bells again.
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said, removing his cap.
DO YOU WANT TO SELL A RABBIT?
Abie Rogers was trying to make somebody answer his knocking at the door of ‘The Ship’. For a small boy he was able to kick up a terrific din with the aid of a rusty saucepan lid he had found on the front path.
He banged and nobody came. He banged again, and again nobody came. He kept this up for five minutes and then put the dead rabbit down by the front door and walked back up the garden path. When he got to the gate he looked back and saw a cat sniffing at the small corpse. Abie threw the saucepan lid with great accuracy and it landed with a clatter right beside the cat. The cat, a large tabby animal belonging to the captain, recognised this saucepan lid as one which had been tied to its tail for the greater part of yesterday and, resigned yet curiously forgiving, it scuttled away, expecting the lid to follow.
Abie came back and picked up the rabbit. He stood idly stroking its fur and wondering what could have happened to the new captain. As he stood there the quiet sounds of the woods were augmented by a laugh. It was a man’s laugh and it seemed to come from beyond the hollyhocks of ‘The Haven’. He made no immediate move, for common sense told him that no man could possibly be in ‘The Haven’. ‘The Haven’ was where Miss Graveley lived and Miss Gravely spoke only to women and girls and boys under twelve.
Soon again the laugh was airborne and Abie’s hunter’s sense overcame his common sense and told him that the new captain was indeed visiting his neighbour. With the rabbit hanging by its feet in one hand he walked down the woodland path to Miss Graveley’s bungalow. He walked around the bungalow and when he got to the sitting room window he saw Miss Graveley and her guest sitting on either side of a most attractive tea, which included several kinds of cake. Abie stepped into view and held aloft the dead rabbit. His eyes were fixed unswervingly on the cakes.
When Miss Graveley caught sight of Abie and the rabbit she got up and opened the window fully. ‘Well, little man,’ she said, ‘and do you want to sell a rabbit?’
‘It belongs to the new captain,’ Abie said, dipping his head a trifle to keep the cakes in view.
The captain reached the window in half a stride. ‘What’s that?’
Abie handed him the rabbit without losing sight of the cakes. ‘You killed it,’ he said absently, ‘with your gun.’
The captain held the rabbit away from him and squinted at it, as though it were a rare oil painting.
Miss Graveley watched him with some slight amusement in her eyes. ‘You must have shot it this afternoon. It will make a nice supper for you.’
The new captain did not reply, for he was almost beyond words. And this was strange, because he had just been recounting to his hostess an abundance of tall stories relating to near squeezes and narrow scrapes in distant and dangerous lands. But Captain Wiles, who had never done any of these things, but had long cherished an ambition to shoot a rabbit, was sent completely out of his head by this little furry victim. He parted the fur and examined the bullet wound. He felt for the rabbit’s pulse. He looked into its dead eyes. His face turned white and crimson in ten-second cycles. He breathed deeply and ecstatically. He tried to say something to Abie and failed. He tried to say something to Miss Graveley and failed. He was completely incoherent for several minutes, during which time Abie stood outside the window watching the cakes and Miss Graveley stood inside the window watching the captain and smiling indulgently. Mingled with this indulgence was a certain fondness. Such excited behaviour in a man of his years was an endearing quality.
At last Captain Wiles held the rabbit aloft and found his voice. ‘I’ve killed a rabbit! I’ve killed a blooming rabbit!’ Then he reached through the window and ruffled the little boy’s hair. ‘Where’d you find it, sonny?’
‘On the cake,’ said Abie promptly.
‘Eh?’
‘On the heath,’ said Abie.
Miss Graveley got Abie a large slice of cake and the small boy retreated gratefully. The captain went slowly back to his chair, stroking the fur of his small victim. ‘I must tell Sam about this,’ he murmured. At that moment his pleasure in the rabbit reached out and embraced his pleasure in all things; in meeting Sam Marlow; in making young Mrs Rogers so happy with the small accident to Harry; in providing shoes for the tramp. Especially in meeting Miss Graveley and hearing the bells. Impulsively he laid his hand on hers and said: ‘It’s a nice afternoon, ma’am.’
She responded by putting her other hand on his arm. ‘And I think you’re awfully nice, Captain Wiles, even when you’re lying to me.’
The Captain opened his mouth to expostulate or something, but Miss Graveley placed a finger across his lips and he said nothing. They exchanged a look. It was the look of an adult man to an adult woman in an adult world.
NICE PEOPLE
The sun lay low across the heath when Captain Wiles and Sam arrived with their spades. The bracken and the shrubbery cast long shadows and small rabbits started in the short grass and quickly hopped back to cover.
Peering into the heart of the rhododendron, the captain said: ‘He seems comfortable, Sam. Very comfortable and snug.’
Sam said: ‘We’d better find a place to bury him and get it dug. The sooner he’s underground the better.’
‘If what you’ve been telling me is right,’ the captain remarked, ‘I agree with you, Sammy.’
They walked the heath looking for a lonely and secluded spot where the earth was soft for digging. Sam led the way into bracken that stood higher than the rest, thick and above their heads. The little captain stumbled after him, picking his feet through bramble and ducking his head under the coarse vegetation.
‘This looks a good place,’ said Sam, stooping.
They surveyed the prospective graveyard. It was completely enclosed by the bracken and overlooked only by the sky. It was almost as gloomy here as it had been under the rhododendron. The ground was a soft bed of black leaf mould.
‘Seems too nice a place to bury a bloke like that,’ Captain Wiles whispered. ‘Wouldn’t mind being buried here meself.’
‘One at a time, please,’ Sam whispered, taking off his jacket.
The captain watched him while he began clearing the leaf mould away with his spade. Suddenly conscious of his audience Sam looked up at him. ‘Well, come on – off with your coat.’
‘What, me?’
‘Yes, of course – it’s your body.’
They dug. They dug and they sweated. They dug violently and silently and the damp, black mould came up in heavy clods. Gradually, very gradually, they worked their way into an oblong hole, casting up a tremendous pile of earth on either side.
Soon the captain was having to manoeuvre his spadeful of earth up and over his shoulder. He worked gamely on till it was no longer possible. Then with a last despairing heave he flung the spade out of the hole and collapsed against the earth wall.
‘What’s the trouble?’ Sam asked, through a curtain of perspiration.
‘Dead beat,’ said the captain, panting.
‘Good,’ Sam said. ‘I was dead beat ten minutes ago, but I wanted to keep on till your last gasp.’
The captain tried to climb out but only succeeded in fetching a lot of earth back into the hole.
‘Don’t do that,’ Sam said, ‘Or you’ll get your wish and be buried here yourself. Here, I’ll give you a hand up.’
Sam took Captain Wiles by the seat of his pants and hoisted him out, then followed up himself. They stood looking down into the hole and it was big and deep and black, smelling strongly of earth.
‘Fair gives me the creeps,’ said the captain.
‘Let’s go and call for Harry then,’ Sam said, leading the way back through the b
racken.
They carried the body of Harry between them and it was as stiff as a plank. Sam took the head and shoulders and the captain the bare feet. They got it into the bracken as soon as they could for fear of meeting somebody who might wonder what they were doing.
The journey from the rhododendron to the grave, which was no more than fifty yards as the crow flies, seemed to take a small eternity, for it was no easy matter to push the bracken aside with the head, keep the feet clear of brambles, and at the same time hold the body securely. And when at last they lowered the corpse into the grave it was, in that grim spot, almost dark.
‘After this,’ Sam remarked, as they straightened their backs, ‘if you must kill, stick to rabbits. The corpse is smaller.’
Captain Wiles, who had begun to push the earth over Harry’s face, suddenly swung around and cried: ‘Rabbits! I didn’t tell you, did I, Sammy? I shot a flipping rabbit this afternoon. Killed it stone dead.’
‘Don’t shout,’ Sam cautioned. ‘I know you did. I was with Jennifer when Abie took it round to you.’
‘Jennifer, eh?’ said the captain, helping to cover up the body. ‘You didn’t waste much time, did you? Still, I don’t blame you. A very nice widow she’ll make, I don’t doubt. Very nice indeed.’
‘Let’s talk about that when we’ve finished burying Harry, shall we?’ Sam said, as Harry’s face vanished beneath the soil.
‘No need to get huffy,’ said the captain. ‘I don’t want to talk about your affairs – I’ve got affairs of my own.’
Sam slung a glance at him. ‘You mean my protégée?’
‘Come again,’ said the captain.
‘Miss Graveley,’ said Sam. ‘The lady I renovated down at Mrs Wiggs’ this afternoon. A most remarkable reversion to femininity, that.’
The captain stopped digging and leant on his spade. ‘I don’t quite get you, Sammy boy.’
Sam also leant on his spade. They faced each other across the gloom of the grave. ‘She came down to the Emporium in high excitement,’ he said. ‘Wanted ribbon for her hair and a new cup and all kinds of things. I gave her a little make-up and a new hairstyle – don’t say you didn’t notice?’
The Trouble With Harry Page 6