First of all he must clear his mind of everything that had passed by means of a good sleep, and that was a simple matter. Doctors had a dozen things that would do that. But what was the other stuff, not the stuff that sends a man to sleep, but that keeps him awake, for a week or ten days if necessary, and keyed up to the last ounce of his strength all the time? He had no medical knowledge, but few men reach his age without picking up a smattering here and there, possibly dangerously wrongly. But he put that aside. Now or never was the time to take a risk. There was heroin then, and there was cocaine. Everybody had heard of these, and some had even seen a collapsed young man or woman, spent with excess, and lo, an absence of less than ten minutes, that stab of whatever it was, and back they were, bright-eyed, laughing, the life and soul of the party once more. Something of that kind was the stuff, and doctors carried these precious, perilous drugs, usually in a case that looked like an attaché-case. If they lost them they commonly lost the lot and not one selected phial or tube. And naturally the final bit of craftiness would have to be left to the chances of the moment. That was why John Brydon had rolled up both his sleeves, one arm for the needle while the other hand was left free for the theft. If Hood put the case down on the couch, one position; if he set it down on the floor, another; if he left it yards away across the studio John Brydon would have to think of some other way. And he must put all his emphasis on his need of sleep. Not a word about keeping awake, awake for another week if necessary.
The doctor arrived, let himself in, and put the case down on a banker. John Brydon was sitting up on the edge of the couch, ready to turn in any position. The doctor advanced to him with a professionally cheerful, ‘Well, and what have you been doing to yourself?’
‘Still the oedema. Give me something to make me sleep. I don’t care if I sleep for a month.’
‘Still the oedema? Let’s have a look at it. Hm!’ he cogitated when he had done so. ‘Well, you’ll be resting while you’re asleep. A month you say? We’ll start with a night anyway. How do you react to these things taken internally?’
‘No use to me at all. I’m afraid I’ve been taking too many things internally. Give it me in my arm.’
And with that the doctor, turning away, did the very thing John Brydon was praying he would do. He returned and set the case down on the floor, admirably within reach. John Brydon rolled over on his left side and held out his right arm for the shot.
And the attention of a doctor who pinches up a bit of loose tissue is for the moment occupied, but Hood was no busier than John Brydon was. With his head half over the edge of the couch and his left hand free he could study the contents of the case almost at his leisure. There they were in their small variously-shaped bottles, digitalin, heroin, strychnine, morphia, others he didn’t know – and what were those, the pill-like things that stared straight at him as if put there purposely for his taking? The bottle was turned half way round, so that he could only read the first four letters of the label: ‘Barb-something.’ Now what was that? Barbituric? Barbituric acid? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is all a man has to depend on when his wax, his irreplaceable wax . . . but he put that thought hurriedly out of his head. Barbituric acid. He had heard of that stuff somewhere. He seemed to remember someone out of the distant past saying that something with a name remarkably like that was powerful yet manageable stuff, well up to the job unless too much of it defeated itself. Anyway he wasn’t going to take it without getting it checked over; the first thing to do was to get hold of it. The doctor had the sleepy-stuff ready. He jabbed the needle into John’s right arm and wiped the place with a bit of cotton wool, watching it meanwhile. ‘There you are,’ he said, ‘and unless you’ve something to get up for you’d better stay where you are. I’ll see to your light. You’ll sleep all right tonight. If you don’t give me a ring in the morning.’
He drew the coverlet over John, and John turned over to sleep; but he kept the little bottle concealed in the palm of his hand till the sound of the doctor’s footsteps had died away down the stairs.
The Bronze
1
Since that attempted leap that had brought him his length along the floor John Brydon’s thoughts and actions had been those of a machine that continues to function of its own momentum. The old, controlling John Brydon had been as it were on a journey. For example, he had not once been near that broken wax to ascertain the extent of the catastrophe that had befallen him. But he woke, twenty hours later, completely in charge of himself again, and lay there on his back without moving, recalling everything that had happened.
And his very first thought cut so deep into the profundities of our life itself as almost to frighten him. For almost up to the moment of the accident his wax had had no armature of wire or lead that by a heroic effort of will and hands he could have wrenched back into its former position had anything gone wrong. Had he followed the customary procedure the thing would have been no more than a shell with a thin lining of fireclay to stiffen it, insufficient to withstand the slightest shock. Then all at once the accident had happened, and now, but for something else, his model would have lain behind him on the floor, unmendable by him or anybody else.
It was the something else that filled him now with an almost terrified hope. He did not even remember giving the curt order. Cavani had been strongly against it. It was not the practise of his craft, he had said. The thing might crack, warp, burst, anything; experience had taught that a just-sufficient lining of fireclay was best, not the whole core run in before the outside support was ready to hold everything together. But in that moment John Brydon had been conscious of his angel close about him. ‘Do not answer him, but do as I say,’ that angel had whispered in his ear, and he had turned an authoritative front to Cavani. Its life was his life, and he had withstood the founder. ‘I’ve no doubt you’re entirely right, but – fill it in, he had commanded, and now, lying on his back on his couch with his nose as imperious as that of an eagle, he could only remember that they had shaken their heads but had done his bidding.
But what else had that angelic whisper meant? It had meant that, foreseeing the disaster, his Guide had also seen the hope and promise beyond. So certain now was he of the solidity of that core and that all would be well in the end that suddenly he got up from his couch, washed himself in cold water, and walked without a falter to where the empty turntable stood.
As the scene of a crime is left undisturbed till the arrival of the police, so at first he stood looking down at the mangled thing only. But after a time he knelt and took the group carefully in his hands. As he did so a spasm twitched his face. At a first glance it was not much better than the worst he had feared. And the core, on which everything depended, was the one thing he could not see. Unless that was intact all would fall to pieces in the firing. But the chance of its resurrection it was going to have. Handling it as tenderly as one handles a sick child John Brydon made a soft place for it on his lap. His fingers might have been manipulating a still-beating heart. He turned his ear into a stethoscope, listening for the minutest crack or crepitation, for he dreaded to believe the almost-too-good-to-be-true thing – that the group’s fall had been so broken, first by the scrape along the edge of the turntable, and next by the padding of the chair seat, that the inside still held together.
But it was a dismaying sight at best. Take a plastic substance like wax and drop it on the floor and each point of contact becomes the tip of a nose that is flattened against a windowpane. What further jarring and straining the thing had sustained might take a week to discover. Half his surface-planes, detail, harness, trappings, had gone. He spent the greater part of that day in tapping, listening, palpitating with sensitive fingers, making notes on a piece of paper, and at the end of it was still making heart-rending discoveries. His faith in his angel was becoming a memory already. His heart sank lower and lower.
But he now had a remedy against that. It was in the
small bottle he had stolen from the doctor’s bag. No more drink; he had drunk himself through the stupid stage into steadiness, and alcohol would no longer serve. So first to make sure of the action of this other stuff. His family doctor in Surrey was also his friend, and he could put his questions in such a way that they would not betray him. He rang up the number, and at the third attempt got him. Tanner answered in an oddly serious voice, and something told John Brydon that the seriousness was not because of the questions he was being asked. But there was no time to waste. He found out more or less what he wanted to know about the properties of the drug, and as for its administering and dosage there were always certain precepts of common sense, even about these things. The maximum effect out of the minimum dose – that was what he was after. Alcohol had so taken away his appetite that he did not feel the need of food. When he did he could order it. Now for another look at those multiple injuries he had noted down on his piece of paper, and to work again.
That night, turning on his powerful overhead light and putting his brown paper shade over his deep-sunk eyes again, with throbbing feet of which he did not feel the pain, a jaded brain that must recapture a first fresh vision, and nothing but a drug and the half-forgotten echo of an angel’s promise to keep him to it, he once more set up his crippled wax on its base.
2
If during the days and nights that followed anybody had asked John Brydon anything about his wife it is doubtful whether he would have taken the question in. This was not because of anything out of the doctor’s bag. As the eye has its blind spot till the focus is adjusted again, so in this one portion of it had his memory. The blank extended, though less completely, to his daughter. There had been a time for Mara and there would be again, but not yet. That his wife had committed a cowardly assassination and that he had turned on her with bared teeth to rend her, these things sometimes occurred to him, but they were gone again almost in the moment of their coming. When the work was finished anything you like. Till then he had peace.
But a family doctor is a family doctor, and is likely to be the doctor of more families than one. Tanner, going his rounds in his car, must have heard whatever gossip there might be about John Brydon’s prolonged absence from his home, and when John Brydon had telephoned to him to ask him the properties of a certain drug he had no doubt noticed the care with which his sometime patient had confined himself to that one subject. One afternoon John Brydon’s telephone rang.
‘Is that you, John? Tanner speaking,’ came the voice.
The sculptor waited for the message.
‘Are you there? How are you? Everything all right?’
‘I’m all right, thanks,’ said John Brydon.
‘Any chance of seeing you down here soon?’
‘If you mean within the next week or so I’m afraid not.’
‘Would you like me to come up and see you?’
‘Why?’ What had Tanner got hold of now? ‘Is anything the matter? with Mara?’
‘Mara’s all right, but –’
‘But what?’
‘I’m not quite so sure about your wife.’
‘Is she ill?’
‘Nothing organically wrong. She’s . . . but look here, there are things we can’t discuss over the telephone –’
‘If she’s ill surely you can look after her?’
‘Listen. We’re pretty good friends. Shall I run up and see you tomorrow?’
But if Tanner came up tomorrow he might notice a number of things John Brydon didn’t want noticed. He would certainly break in on precious time, and if John Brydon, keyed up as he was, once allowed himself to relax he might never reach the tension again. And that settled it. Mara was all right. There was nothing organically the matter with Winifred. He answered that he was engaged tomorrow.
‘Very soon after then?’ came the voice.
‘If she isn’t well look after her. I’m very busy. I’ll come down as soon as I can. I’ll give you a ring,’ and John Brydon hung up the receiver again.
But the effects of that telephone conversation continued long after their cause was removed. What (he had to ask himself) was to happen when his work was finished? If his time was to be wasted like this would it ever be finished? Suppose he did finish it, his core failed him after all, and it cracked up in the furnace? Was he to take up his life again exactly as he had left it? As if nothing had happened? Was that his duty? To forgive? Oh, he was not going to harbour any bitterness. She had his forgiveness now if it was any good to her, that was to say if she could ever forgive herself. ‘Till death us do part?’ That was something he had vowed at the altar, and there was always that way out; gas, the razor, an overdose, the shot – there were as many ways out as there were flowers in her Surrey garden. But if there had really been anything he could have done for her Tanner would have told him. She simply didn’t understand, never had understood; didn’t know that she was pressing on him with her thoughts now, as before she had fluttered about him with her body. If she would only let him finish his work there were plenty of things he had to be forgiven too, and he must be getting on with it. Tanner’s call, for no reason that he could see except to ask him how was he and when he was coming home and to tell him that his wife wasn’t very well but there was nothing really the matter with her, had been distraction enough. Did she expect to be very well after . . . but he must be careful about that. That sounded a little as if he had not forgiven her. He crossed to the wall-cupboard where he kept the little bottle.
Apart from the core, the stuff had enabled him to do a miracle of repairing. That night, in order to bring out the detail under the strong light, he had given the thing a light sheen of oil, and this had woken up the lovely dead rose almost as if it had been the bronze itself. But at what a cost to John Brydon he had only to look in the glass to see. And as he stood there, sunken-chested with the cramped standing that was easiest for his feet, half-bearded, dead-eyed, hollow-cheeked but indomitable, he forgot that it was not afternoon, and glanced across at the glass against the wall, remembering how he and she had stood in that same spot with the statue between them. And his grim mouth relented. Forgiveness? How can one forgive something that hasn’t happened? It had been still in the clay then, and was it not in the wax again now? What did the horrible gulf in between matter? That was all a nightmare. She had not done it. What was not a nightmare was that that was about him now, the two of them side by side, with Mara standing serious-eyed between them, remembering what he had told her about the batters. She was Winifred and he was John, and the child had come forth from her even as his group was born of himself. ‘Almost like having a baby.’ Was it not true, as true at heart as herself? Oh, let her wait a little, just a little longer! It had not been easy for him either. And she and Mara were coming to see the last stage of all. He frowned for a moment; had he told Mara the date? Then he remembered. Of course he hadn’t. The date had had to be altered, anyway. But he would be able to tell her in a very few days. He would ring up Tanner. It would be better to telephone to Tanner rather than to his own home, because – because – because of something that for the moment escaped him. Of course there would have to be some sort of an explanation between him and Winifred. A man can’t have his work knocked about in a fit of temper like that, and as Tanner said there were some things you couldn’t talk about over the telephone. So he would telephone to Tanner. Then Mara would come, bringing Winifred with her. He would have his hair cut and be shaved. And they had better all meet at the foundry. That way it would be less like asking her to come. Only a few days now – only a few more days. And now for that bridle and reins. They would have to be re-made afterwards, but he wanted to see the line, the glint, the last little touches of realism that give life to all the rest.
But first he went to the cupboard in the wall again.
3
Not one in a hundred of the people who passed the end of th
e narrow alley ever suspected that such a place as a bronze-foundry existed there. All that they saw was a little cluster of London cottages so poor as almost to be called a slum, with doors mostly open and children at play outside them. But near the end on the right was an inconspicuous entry with a heavy iron ring-knocker. You knocked at this, and the door was opened by a humorous-looking Italian in old boots and a smock and with a tall paper cap on his head like that of a chef. This was Cavani, master-founder and last of a line of founders, for in spite of his talk of Venice by moonlight and love that turned the blood to quicksilver in the veins he had no son. The chambers of his foundry were three. The first of these, like the moulding-shop, was a crowded jumble of grimy figures and grotesques and reliefs and moulds and portions of castings of all descriptions. The second was a top-lighted anteroom, a mortuary of a place where the wax victim was made ready for the final sacrifice. But it was in neither of these that John Brydon stood, waiting for the knock at the door that would tell him that Mara had been brought in the car. He had descended by four unrailed wooden steps into a dungeon below, stifling with the fumes of coke, the walls of sooty stone. He had supported himself between two heavy sticks, and his mouth drew tighter every time he looked at the watch on his wrist. If she – they – didn’t come in a very few minutes they could not be waited for.
The Dead of Night Page 68