Plender

by Ted Lewis

  I concentrated on the people in the bar, using them to obstruct the bar itself, so that the décor wouldn’t bring back the events of Saturday night. But everywhere I looked, it was myself and Eileen that I saw, going through the motions of our date. But by now, I was coming to a kind of acceptance of my dreadful memories, so that now the dreadfulness was dull and aching in my stomach, instead of attacking my brain and stinging me with panic. It was as if my nerve ends had been cauterised so that I couldn’t feel pain anymore, but at the same time, if I were to put my hands in the fire, the memory of pain would pulse slowly through my body. The worst thoughts I had now concerned the future, the worst of all being when was I ever going to feel something other than guilt and fear. Would I ever be able to laugh without the memory of what had happened rising up in my throat? Would I ever wake up in the morning without my first thoughts being of Eileen’s dead face? When would there be an evening without my dreading a phone call from Plender?

  There was a movement near the alcove. A man paused, surprised, then moved on quickly. It was Reed, I was sure. I watched him for a moment or two. He looked back at the booth, just to make sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Then he looked round the bar and I was able to have a good look at his face. He was as Plender had described him, but beneath his Gannex coat I could see the knot of a gaily coloured cravat and his trousers didn’t belong to a business suit. He turned a full circle and made uneasily for the bar.

  I waited for him to order his drink then I threaded my way through the tables and stood next to him at the bar. I ordered another drink for myself and pretended to be looking at people on either side of Reed, while in fact most of the time I was watching his face. He was sweating but his skin wasn’t flushed; it was very pale and white, the colour of ice cream. His eyes flicked towards the door each time someone new came into the bar, and each time he took a sip of his drink when he looked away again.

  It was a strange feeling, standing next to a man who didn’t know you, yet knowing exactly why he was there and what you were going to say to him, knowing that he would be off his guard when you spoke, surprised. Perhaps a little frightened.

  He caught me looking at him, then looked away quickly. I saw in his glance exactly what he was thinking; I was trying to pick him up. It made me smile a grim smile. Me, of all people. In this place, of all places.

  I said to him, “Mr. Reed?”

  He looked at me, startled into blankness. He didn’t speak.

  “Mr. Reed?” I said again.

  He looked me up and down, drawing away from me slightly.

  “Are you waiting for Lesley and Camille?”

  “Who are you?” he said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m here on their behalf.”

  “Who are you?”

  “You are Mr. Reed? The Mr. Reed who replied to the magazine?”

  He didn’t answer.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m from the magazine, not the police station.”

  I listened to myself talking. I sounded like a different person.

  He still didn’t say anything.

  “The thing is,” I said, “it’s always done this way. To protect our advertisers. On both sides.”

  “Why wasn’t I told in the letter?”

  “We don’t like to make our advertisers unduly nervous. We don’t like them to feel even the suggestion that a small fraction of our advertisers may not be genuine, not at that stage.”

  “What about now?”

  “I’m sure that within half an hour you’ll be convinced that there’s no need for nervousness. As will the two clients you’re making contact with.”

  There was relief in the way I was talking. By being businesslike and calm I was able to get away from myself for a short while.

  I wondered if Plender did it this way. And I wondered what he’d think of my own approach.

  “Well it’s very worrying when you’re not expecting anything like this,” he said, looking about him as if to make sure there were no more surprises looming close by.

  “I can understand that,” I said. “But the sooner we get on our way the better you’ll feel.”

  “On our way.”

  “I’m just an intermediary,” I said. “I take you to the house and then I leave you.”

  “Why don’t you just give me the address?”

  “We think this way is better. Then neither client runs the risk of being disappointed.”

  He downed his drink.

  “Very well,” he said. “Let’s be on our way.”

  We didn’t speak during the drive. The mood I’d assumed in the bar dropped away from me the closer we got to the council house. I remembered the other night and the things that I’d photographed, things too close to my own activities for my comfort, yet far enough removed to revolt me, and to be revolted with myself by association.

  I parked the car around the corner, the way Plender had done. We got out and walked around into the other road and I took Reed up the path to the front door and rang the doorbell four times the way Plender had told me to.

  The door was opened by an attractive girl wearing a blonde wig. She smiled at us both.

  “Mr. Reed?” she said.

  “That’s right,” Reed said.

  “I’m Lesley,” she said. “Come in.”

  Reed went in and the girl called Lesley began to close the door. I heard her telling Reed to go into the lounge and introduce himself to Camille. I turned away and began to walk down the path but the door that had never properly closed was opened wide again and light fanned out on to the ground in front of me causing me to turn round.

  Lesley was standing in the doorway motioning me to go back to the house. I stood and stared at her. Her movements became more agitated so I walked back to the doorway.

  “Come in,” she whispered, looking over her shoulder. When I didn’t move she tugged at my sleeve and I allowed myself to be pulled into the hall. She closed the door quietly behind her and closed the lounge door and then hurried me down the hall, out of sight, near the room where I’d taken the photographs.

  “Where the hell do you think you were going?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Keep your voice down,” she said. “What do you think I mean?”

  I shook my head.

  “The pictures,” she said. “You’re supposed to take the pictures.”

  “Pictures?”

  “For Mr. Plender. He phoned telling us to expect a different feller tonight, and that’s you, isn’t it?”

  “But he didn’t tell me.”

  “Do you take pictures for Mr. Plender?”

  “I have done, but . . ...”

  “Well then you’d better get in there, quick. Or else Mr. Plender’ll be wondering why he didn’t get any pictures, and that can’t be good, can it?”

  “But I haven’t got a camera. I didn’t bring anything.”

  “Mr. Plender brought some stuff round with him when he let us in. So get on with it. I’ve got to go.”

  She turned away and hurried down the hall.

  I just stood there, in the dead, brightly lit hall, staring at her till she disappeared into the lounge, closing the door behind her.

  The silence of the hall rang in my ears.

  I stood there for a few moments longer, then went into the other room.

  PLENDER

  I lay on my bed listening to Froy’s voice rattle out of the recorder.

  “I’ve told Plender to stop using the place,” he was saying. “If there was any kind of a scandal some of our friends on the Force might find it difficult just to go through the motions if one of their number discovered something about us and decided to investigate.”

  “Is it what it appears to be?” said th
e other voice.

  “I think so,” said Froy. “I’ve discussed it with Plender and I believe him when he says he knows nothing about it other than what everybody else knows.”

  I reached out and snapped off the recorder. Then I felt for my cigarettes and lit up and lay on my back fiddling with my lighter, pressing the tits and releasing them, letting the flame alternately spurt out and cut off.

  Froy, I thought.

  Froy. All I needed to know was the phone number. The phone number of the person he reported to. That was all I needed to know.

  There was one way it could be done. A camera with a long lens, outside, when he dialed. But there were too many factors that had to be right. The curtains had to be open. The telephone had to be facing a certain way. The man with the camera had to be around when it was certain that Froy was going to make a call. Too many factors, all having to be dead right.

  I thought about Froy and I thought about Knott.

  KNOTT

  At first they played a kind of charades.

  One scene looked as though it was meant to be taking place in a train. The girls sat on one settee and Reed sat on the one opposite, pretending to look at his paper. The girls looked at magazines or acted out looking through the imaginary window until gradually I realised that behind the newspaper Reed was exposing himself, the way he must have wanted to on his morning train, but here he could do it in safety, relish the pretended excited shocks of the two girls and extend his fantasy into complete reality. After a while the girls fell on him and tied him and began to punish him, the punishment eventually turning into sex play, but before the sex play went too far, the fantasy was broken up by Reed, who gave directions to the girls to begin another game. One of the settees was pushed back and a writing desk and two chairs dragged into the centre of the room. One of the girls left the room and Reed sat behind the desk on one chair and the girl called Lesley sat on the other chair in front of the desk, holding a writing pad and a biro. Reed began to dictate to her and the girl pretended to take dictation. When she’d finished she handed Reed the notebook. Reed looked at the blank page and affected irritation. The girl pretended to be upset and Reed handed back the notebook and the performance was acted out again. Reed dictated and the girl took notes and handed the book over for inspection, and Reed pretended to be even more annoyed and the girl pretended to be even more upset. A third time they acted out the charade and this time Reed pretended to lose his temper with the girl and ordered her to bend over the desk. He took a folding two foot rule from his trouser pocket and opened it out, lifted the girl’s dress and began to punish her. After a little while the other girl came into the room, threw up her hands in mock horror, then proceeded to turn the tables by helping the girl called Lesley to tie Reed across the desk and use the ruler on him.

  I stopped taking pictures.

  I turned away and leant against the wall, my head tilted back, my eyes closed. I felt sick again. Sick because what I had been watching was like looking into a mirror and seeing myself in the execution of my own fantasies seeing them for what they were, sordid, self-defeating, addictive to the point where satisfaction could not be reached in the fantasy itself but only by replacing the fantasy with another; a vicious circle of fantasy followed by fantasy, frustration by frustration. Because there was no end result. No climax satisfactory enough to sate an appetite longer than a few hours. No climax satisfactory enough to generate calm and security on which the mind and body could float and feed and nourish themselves. There was nothing there but the fantasy, the mind part, and thoughts were dead and withered divorced from any bodily satisfaction. But why? The memories of past climaxes must spur the body on to relive those memories in other, different bodies, other, different situations. Or was it just desire driven by the desperation of continued anticlimax, searching each time in the hope that this time there will be a kind of satisfaction? If not, what else was there?

  And also I felt sick with myself because of my feelings at that moment in time. Pathetic and depressing as the antics in the other room were, they’d still managed to have an effect on me, sexually. In spite of the situation I was in, in spite of my own self-disgust, my affinities with the scenes in the other room were stronger than my guilt and my revulsion. I was an animal. Even now, I was excited.

  The door opened. I turned my head. It was the other girl, Camille. She stood in the doorway, holding a glass and a bottle of whisky.

  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” she said, looking me up and down. I realised what my position suggested to her and I relaxed and shrugged myself away from the wall.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “It takes a lot to embarrass me.”

  She poured some whisky into the glass. She looked prettier in the soft red light of the tiny room than she had looked when I’d watched her through the window.

  “Thought you might fancy a drink,” she said. “I know I could use one.”

  She took a drink from the glass before she offered it to me. The lipstick she left on the rim looked black in the room’s red light.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking the glass and drinking. I could feel her watching me.

  “I’ve not seen you before, have I?” she said. “Or have I?”

  She was standing very close to me. I looked into her face. Her soft perfume washed over me. I glanced through the window, wondering why she wasn’t in the other room. Reed was taking his own pictures of the girl called Lesley.

  “I’m not in this one,” Camille said, in a coy way. “This is where him and Lesley make it together. Bitch. She has all the luck. It’s her eyelashes that do it. They’re real, you know. Still, at least with her he’s not in for any unpleasant surprises.”

  I didn’t know what she was talking about. I drank the rest of the whisky. The girl tipped the bottle and filled the glass again. She stared at me while she poured. I tried to avoid her eyes but there was nowhere to look except through the window into the other room. The girl looked too.

  “That your sort of scene, is it?” she said.

  Plender. Plender had said something like that to me.

  I shook my head.

  “S’pose it leaves you cold,” she said, “I mean, you doing this all the time, for a living, like.”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t take my eyes off the window. Now Reed had finished taking pictures and he and the girl were lying on the settee.

  “I know it leaves me cold,” said the girl. “But then it would, wouldn’t it.”

  I sensed her move closer to me.

  “Here,” she said softly, “are you sure I haven’t seen you somewhere before?”

  I didn’t answer. There was a silence. Her arm brushed against me and her fingers touched mine.

  “I know,” she said. “Yes. I knew I had. In Peggy’s. Couple of times. I knew I was right.”

  I turned and faced her.

  “I knew it,” she said. “I knew I was right.”

  There was something about her face. Something that the expression of triumph was doing to her features. She gripped my fingers tightly.

  “You naughty boy you,” she said. “Peggy’s. Well, it certainly is a small world, isn’t it?”

  Her face. Different. It was altered. She pressed against me.

  Then I knew.

  I hit out with all the force in my body. Camille screamed and fell against the tripod, smashing the camera against the wall.

  “Bastard,” screamed Camille, tears spreading the mascara down his face. “Bloody rotten bastard.”

  He tried to get up.

  I lashed out with my foot and caught him full on the shoulder. He fell back again, hugging himself in agony.

  I lurched out of the room and ran down the hall and flung open the front door. I heard the door into the lounge open and then the voices of the others receding away behind
me as I ran.

  PLENDER

  I spent the first part of the morning reading the papers. There was nothing else to do and I wasn’t meeting Knott until midday in the Tivoli Tavern. After Lesley had called and let me have the story about what happened, I’d given Knott half an hour to get home, just to make sure that in fact he’d done just that. When I’d heard his voice at the other end of the line I’d just told him when and where I wanted to meet him and hung up. But before I’d done that I’d heard Kate’s voice in the background screaming at him to tell her who it was that was calling.

  My secretary brought me my coffee at ten thirty and I was sitting there drinking it and looking out of the window when the intercom buzzed and my secretary said, “There’s a Mrs Knott in reception to see you. She says she hasn’t an appointment.”

  I put my cup down on my saucer. The window shuddered. I said, “That’s all right. I’ll come out.”

  I got up and walked round my desk and opened the door. Kate Knott was standing in reception, her back to the desk, pretending to be mildly interested in the surroundings.

  “Kate,” I said.

  She turned to face me. She was wearing dark glasses and underneath her make-up her skin was pale.

  “How nice,” I said. “You’re the last person I expected to see.”

  “I expect I am,” she said. “Actually I was in town shopping and I thought I’d drop in on you and see how a real detective lives.”

  Her voice strained to project the lightness the remark was meant to generate.

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, standing back to let her go through the door into my office. “You just didn’t really believe it when I said I was a detective. You came to catch me out.”

  I closed the door behind me and took her coat.

  “Well, I had to look up your address in the phone book,” she said. “And there it was in the yellow pages—B. Plender, Private and Commercial Investigator.”

  “Of course,” I said, “I was forgetting you’d have to look me up.” I indicated the low upholstered chair by the picture window. “Would you like some coffee?”