The Suburbs of Hell

by Randolph Stow

  The man on the doorstep was Black Sam. ‘You, boy,’ said Harry, looking distrait. ‘Parky, innit?—but a nice clear night. You comin in, or what?’

  ‘I’d like to come in for a bit,’ said Sam. His speech was slurred.

  ‘Why, boy, I do believe you’re pissed,’ said Harry. ‘That’s something I int never sin before. You lose your licence and you’re in dead shtook. Well, come in to the fire.’

  When he was seated opposite Harry, with the dog sniffing at his shoes, Sam said: ‘You’re bleedin, Harry. Your finger.’

  ‘So I am,’ Harry realized. ‘Well, here’s the medicine for that.’ He dipped his finger into the whisky beside him, then shook it in the air to dry. Little ribbons of blood hung suspended in the glass. ‘Best antiseptic I know,’ said Harry. ‘Can I give you one?’

  ‘Don’t think so, thanks,’ said Sam. ‘No, I shall give it a rest.’

  ‘What brought this on,’ Harry wondered, ‘this sudden change in your sober habits?’

  ‘Just—ah, the blues,’ Sam said. ‘Pissed off, therefore pissed. I saw all your lights on, and I thought I’d give you a look. Tell me to bugger off if you’re busy.’

  ‘You make yourself at hoom, boy. Look at that good fire. I’m glad there’s someone here to admire it.’

  ‘Dave not indoors?’

  ‘No,’ Harry said. ‘He goo off roamin around in that van, I dunno where. Most of his dole money goo on petrol, I reckon.’

  The fire caved in, and Harry got up to poke it and put on coal. ‘Harry,’ Sam said, to his back, ‘I’m in a hell of a state.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Harry said. ‘You int workin, are you?’

  ‘No, I got the day off. I started drinkin last night. I know that don’t solve nothing. I know that’s all there again when you sober up.’

  ‘What is it, Sam?’ Harry asked. He sat down again, but on the edge of his chair, looking into Sam’s face. ‘Spit it out. Trouble with Donna?’

  ‘Yeh,’ Sam said. ‘That too. We int together no more, as of last night. And my job’s goin, I can feel it sort of escapin from me. Christ, Harry, I don’t know where to go, I don’t know what to do, with this hangin over me. People are sayin I killed three people, and drove one crazy. Last night, just for a moment, even Donna believed that. Just for a moment, thass all, but after that, Jesus, how could we ever be like we used to be again?’

  Harry took his eyes away from Sam’s, which were slightly bloodshot, and directed them at the floor. Stony-faced, he said: ‘I’ve heard some talk like that. But that won’t last, Sam. Believe you me, boy, when they see you gooin about your daily business in the usual way, they’ll start to laugh at themselves after a while. I on’y hope it weren’t nothing I said that put that idea into young Greg’s head. Because he’s at the bottom of it, of course, but that int really his fault, bein so sick.’

  Sam had sat up straighter. ‘You said something to him?’

  ‘I might have,’ Harry said. ‘In the beginnin there was some talk, some theories, about you among others. And that fair got my rag out, and I might have sounded off about it in front of Greg, I don’t remember.’

  Sam, with a grim mouth, said: ‘Thanks, mate.’

  ‘I told you I’m sorry,’ Harry said. ‘Anything I said was to make them laugh at the stoopid idea. How else could I deal with it, Sam, bein on your side? I thought I was doin my best for you, that’s why I spook out.’

  ‘Yeh,’ Sam said, noncommittally; but he did relax again. ‘Okay. Thanks.’

  ‘I’m a bit out of sorts tonight,’ Harry said, restlessly. ‘I’m a bit—whass the word?—occupied. I wish you’d have a drink. Or how about a coffee, that might do you a bit of good.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Sam said, and stood up.

  ‘You off already? Well, not such a bad idea. You goo and sleep it off, boy, and in the mornin things will look brighter. Like you say, the bottle never solved anything.’

  Sam was at the door giving on to the street, waiting for Harry to let him out. He said: ‘Things go. Like a landslide. Suddenly there int nothing left.’

  ‘Thass the drink talkin,’ diagnosed Harry. ‘Very depressin stuff, if you’re depressed.’

  He held the door open, and Sam went out to his taxi. The light on the roof of it was turned off.

  ‘Hey,’ Harry called after him, ‘smile.’ And as Sam forced a grin, he exclaimed admiringly: ‘Just look at them teeth.’

  When Sam was gone and the door was closed against the cold he went to the hearth to warm himself. He stooped to pick up a dustpan and brush. Then he went upstairs.

  And every moon made some or other mad.

  And now and then one hang himself for grief,

  Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll

  How I with interest tormented him.

  Barabas in The Jew of Malta

  Now the moon is on the water, the silver-blue shallow valley to which black woods and frosty fields tend gently down.

  An unsurfaced track, paler than the rimed grass, ends at the farmhouse. Its windows have a blue gleam. The rooms behind are dusty, the roof is unsound. Nobody has wakened there for years; no dog, for years, has barked at a crawling car.

  He sits in the silent car which is beginning to grow chill. He watches the unstirred water. The moonlight lays a film of blue on his dark skin.

  A pheasant, waking, honks in the nearby wood, and two more reply. The sound in that stillness is strident, violent. He shivers, and sits up straight.

  He knows that now, after all, it will be done, that the revenge plotted in drunkenness, with anger and self-pity, will be carried out in a cold calm.

  A light comes on for a moment as he opens the door, then vanishes as he quietly closes it. He has a small flashlight in his hand. He goes to the boot and opens it and reaches inside.

  He closes the boot. Flashlight in hand, he squats in the whitened grass, fumbling stiff-fingered with the length of hose.

  The light comes on again, and now his figure is stooping black against the door, winding down the window a crack, clamping in the crack the frost-hard hose. Then the dark returns.

  The engine starts, and runs sweetly.

  He lies along the seat, his knees drawn up. His hands press to his cheeks, for comfort, the collar of his sheepskin coat. He is attached to that coat, as single men grow attached to things.

  The smell from the hose was to him, when a boy, something exhilarating, a perfume. It smelled of liberation and promise. His father, the black British working-man, never owned a car, never held a licence.

  From where he lies the line of his eyes takes in the taller trees of the wood, sharply drawn against the light sky, holding in their black coral boughs black shocks of rooks’ nests.

  He is very calm. He was very calm, but suddenly his body, his heart, is invaded by a terrible agitation. His body, his shaking heart, want him to move. His violent heart is leaping.

  But his body is heavy, he cannot move it. Only his lips, which open on a groan. His voice is thick with trembling and affright. ‘Ah—forgive!’

  6

  FALLING OUT

  At the top of the stairs Harry paused, holding a steaming mug in one hand, and looked across the small room to the window framing a line of roofs, and over them heavy pewter-coloured clouds with a tinge of sandy-yellow.

  He stepped into the room and stood by the bed, where the blankets moulded the shape of a body. With his free hand he pulled them back, revealing a pillow and a mass of black hair.

  ‘Dave,’ he said. He gave a tug at the black beard. ‘Time you come alive, boy.’

  The young man rolled over, and lay blinking at the ceiling, until his eyes focused and took in the other presence. Half rising on one elbow, the bedclothes draped over his bare shoulders, he said, doubtingly: ‘Harry?’

  ‘Thass gone ten o’clock,’ Harry said, disapproving. ‘I brought you some tea.’

  A tattooed arm came out to take the mug, but Dave was puzzled. ‘Whass this, then—a celebration? Your
birfday, Harry?’

  ‘No,’ said Harry. ‘But thass nearly yours, come to think of it.’

  ‘What a memory,’ said Dave, but not with pleasure.

  ‘You’ll be twenty-five,’ Harry said, looking down at the glossy black head bent over the mug. ‘Time you was makin a plan or two, if you ask me.’

  Dave emptied the mug, set it on the floor, and lay back with the blankets pulled up to his chin. ‘Cor, boy, thass cold out there,’ he shivered. ‘Look at that sky. We shall have snow, I reckon.’

  ‘Listen, Dave,’ Harry said, ‘I come up here to have a talk with you, and that int about the weather. I got serious things to say to you.’

  He was looking directly at the young man’s black eyes, and they showed a sudden spark of resistance, which he moved to quell.

  ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I never meddle in your affairs. But last night I needed my toolbox, so I come up here, ’cause thass under your bed there. Yes,’ he went on, as Dave lifted his head from the pillow, ‘yes, you guessed it. What happen was, I drop some tools on that parcel and cut it open.’

  After a while, Dave said softly: ‘Shit.’

  ‘Thass what you call it, innit,’ Harry said, ‘you modern youngsters? You call it shit.’

  Dave’s naked torso suddenly appeared, hanging over the side of the bed while he searched beneath it. When he came up again, the face above the beard was flushed. ‘What have you done wiv it?’ he demanded.

  ‘You didn’t notice, then?’ Harry asked. ‘I thought, when you come in last night, or this mornin, you might have noticed a smell. Because I put it on the fire.’

  Dave was looking too amazed to speak.

  ‘I don’t want that kind of stuff in my house,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t want Taffy Hughes and his lot comin in and turnin my place over. They don’t even need no warrant, as I understand it. Thass been puzzlin my head for a long time, Dave, wonderin what that was what you and Frank was up to together. What I thought was, I thought that might be burglary. Well, at last I know that int—unless you got two strings to your bow.’

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ Dave groaned. ‘Oh you stoopid fuckin old tool, Harry. Do you know what that was worf?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ said Harry firmly.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ Dave said. ‘You’re too old, Harry, your generation’s got funny ideas about it.’

  ‘I was a teenager when I first smoked it,’ Harry said.

  ‘Was you?’ asked Dave, surprised. But then, refusing to be deflected, he went on: ‘That int no great big fing, thass just somefing people do, like smokin and drinkin. Dint you hear about that woman—respectable housewife, I fink she was—what got caught here last summer comin back from Holland wiv a pound of the stuff? She tell the magistrates: “Oh,” she say, “I was on’y wantin to make tea wiv it.” They give her a fine, or p’rhaps not even that.’

  ‘She weren’t dealin in it,’ Harry said, ‘I presoom.’

  ‘That don’t do no harm,’ said Dave, brooding resentfully.

  ‘I done some thinkin last night,’ said Harry in a pleasant tone, ‘and I put two and two together a foo times over. I was askin myself: Why is Linda De Vere the way she is? Why is she, Dave? What’s she on?’

  ‘On?’ Dave repeated, wrinkling his forehead. ‘She int on nofing. Gin and tonic, thass what Linda’s on.’

  ‘Don’t push me, boy,’ Harry warned. ‘I’m still capable of doin serious physical damage to a soft-bellied kid like you.’

  ‘I told you,’ Dave insisted, ‘she int on nofing. I fink she used to be. Not shootin up, like, but snortin and smokin. Then she got married, and I don’t fink she do that no more.’

  ‘She might have give Frank an idea,’ Harry said.

  ‘Na-a-ah,’ said Dave. ‘Not that sort of idea.’

  ‘Would you know?’ Harry wondered. ‘When you’re drivin all over the place in that van, would you know if some of that stuff you was deliverin weren’t marijuana?’

  ‘O’ course I should,’ Dave protested, but uncertainly.

  ‘If that int,’ Harry pointed out, ‘there must be a foo other people besides Frank De Vere laughin up their sleeves at you.’

  ‘All you’re doin,’ Dave said angrily, ‘is makin mischief. That’s it, innit? Makin mischief.’

  Harry wandered over to the window and stood looking out at the threatening sky. ‘Listen, Dave,’ he said, ‘I was meanin, before I found that stuff, I was meanin to bring you up a cup of tea this mornin and have a little chat, like. Good noos, boy. You’ve got a job.’

  ‘Job?’ Dave said. ‘I don’t want no job.’

  ‘I know you don’t,’ said Harry, ‘but you’ve got one. On our rig, as a labourer. I was goonna ask you if you’d take it. Now I’m tellin you. You int got no choice.’

  The piratical-looking young man sat up in bed, glowering with the delayed and futile rage of a rather passive child. On his chest was tattooed a blue eagle. ‘You int in charge of my life,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, I am,’ said Harry, and smiled at him. ‘Taffy Hughes—Detective-Sergeant Lexden—them names mean nothing to you?’

  He came back across the room, pausing to glance at the photograph of the drowned fisherman. He made a point of glancing at it. Then he stooped to pick up the mug from the floor. As he straightened, he gave a rough pat to the black head.

  ‘I don’t believe,’ he said, ‘you’re seriously a bad boy. You’re too gormless for that.’

  He went to the door. Behind him Dave was cursing, without force or conviction, underneath the bedclothes.

  In their lounge the De Veres were giving themselves a pre-Sunday-dinner drink. A pleasant smell of roasting meat came drifting in from the kitchen. It suggested to both of them a sort of sleepy domesticity remembered from other times. But Frank was turning over the pages of a Sunday colour supplement; Linda was watching the snow drift down beyond the net curtains. Their memories did not include one another.

  ‘Don’t know why we waste money on it,’ Frank said at last, pushing the magazine aside. ‘All that paper, and nothing to read in it.’

  ‘I don’t waste money,’ Linda said, in a dreaming voice, soothed by the snow. ‘I read; you don’t.’

  ‘Oh yes, you read,’ he agreed. ‘I can’t deny that, you’re good at reading.’

  As she did not answer, he tried again. ‘Stuffing your head round the clock with crap that’s as far as possible from real life—that you do well.’

  ‘It’s not crap,’ she said listlessly. ‘But what would you know about it?’

  ‘You’re like a patient in a hospital,’ he said, ‘with tubes going everywhere. Coronation Street up one arm, The Archers up the other. Barbara Cartland up your nose.’

  Roused at last, she turned her pale face on him. ‘I’ve never read Barbara Cartland.’

  ‘Just a brand name,’ he said. ‘If I say Hoover, I don’t mean it’s not an Electrolux.’

  Her short-sighted eyes were large and vague. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘why it took me so long—longer than three minutes—to see what a deeply dislikeable man you are. Last night I quite took myself by surprise. I caught myself telling Donna that I’d like to leave you.’

  He asked, with a superior smile: ‘To go where?’

  ‘Where you aren’t,’ she said.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ he said, patronizing. ‘What, out in the wide world, you? You’d be like a pet hamster turned loose in an African game park.’

  Then she withdrew from him again, and went back to watching the snow, examining that judgement on herself.

  He stood up, an empty glass in his hand, and asked in a neutral tone: ‘Your drink all right? I need another cold one.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘While you’re out there, baste the meat and turn the potatoes. I might not do it right.’

  He went to the kitchen and took a lager from the refrigerator, and began to drink it from the can, looking out at the little yard whose high walls were rimmed with snow. The swirling flakes were com
ing faster and bigger. Standing close by the window, he could see two gulls wheeling among them overhead.

  While he was attending to the food in the oven he heard the doorbell ring. Presently Linda called from the passage, in a hostessly voice: ‘Frank, here’s Dave come to play with you.’

  Closing the oven, he straightened up, and looked without a welcome at Dave, whose donkey-jacket and woollen cap were white with clinging snow. ‘Messy bugger,’ he said. ‘You’re melting on the floor.’

  Dave pulled to the sliding door, and then turned to him.

  ‘Hey, what’s up?’ Frank asked, half alarmed, seeing the trepidation in his face.

  ‘He knows,’ Dave said, in a whisper. ‘Harry. He found it.’

  Frank’s cold blue eyes studied him. ‘Found it where?’

  ‘Under my bed. It was an accident,’ Dave explained, or pleaded. ‘He bust it open, accidental, like. I couldn’t know, could I, he was goonna start pokin around my fings?’

  Frank said, with a venomous reasonableness: ‘It is his house, mate. A little bit of care and forethought was called for there.’

  ‘Well, thass done now,’ Dave said, shamefaced. ‘He frew it on the fuckin fire.’

  He flinched a little at the fury in his partner’s pockmarked face, and turned aside from the blazing eyes to find a chair. He sat hunched in his coat, booted legs stretched out clumsily.

  Frank reached absently for his lager can and sucked on it.

  ‘Okay,’ he said at last, ‘what’s the story? What does he say?’

  ‘Oh, he was rabbitin on,’ Dave said, ‘the way you’d expect. Disappointed in me, like. All that. And he says I got to start work, wif him, on the rig. If I don’t, well, he kind of freatened me wif Taffy Hughes.’

  ‘Did he, by God?’ Frank muttered.

  ‘But he wouldn’t, would he, Frank? I mean, landin a couple of friends in the shit for smugglin, that int somefing old Harry would do.’

  ‘No,’ Frank said. ‘No, I’m inclined to think he wouldn’t.’

  ‘So, what am I goonna do, mate?’