Nothing But the Truth

by Sam Lock

  There had been rain during the early part of the evening, so the streets were damp and cool, and there were no people about – or very few, at least; which was often the case in Chelsea in those days. Then, as he left the King’s Road, and as he turned into one of the side-streets that lead to the river, he found himself being attracted by a sudden glitter of light, that was reflecting from a pavement-edge ahead of him, quite close to a pedestrian crossing.

  ‘At first, I wondered what this odd glitter of light could be,’ Jason later wrote in his notebook. ‘Then, as I drew closer, I could see that the source of it was a scattering of small fragments of glass, that were strewn across the pavement’s edge, and that then spilled into the road. And I knew at once – simply because I have seen such a thing before, and have seen it many times, in fact – that they must be the splintered and scattered fragments of a car’s headlamps; or of its windscreen, perhaps; and guessed immediately that it meant there had been an accident. What so disturbed me, however, and is why I feel that I must write about it now; so soon after it occurred; so that it cannot dissolve into daily time, where so many things are disposed of and forgotten; is that no sooner had my eye assessed what the cause of this glitter of light must be, than I noticed at its centre (as if it might be at the heart or centre of a wound) a dark red stain or mark, the greater part of which was on the pavement, as opposed to on the road.

  ‘Was this the mark of blood? was the first thought that came into my head. Had someone been injured, or even died, perhaps – here, just a short time ago? Was this, I asked myself, the blood of some other human being than myself, that I didn’t know, and that I had not set eyes on in my life, that was marking the pavement of this quiet, Chelsea thoroughfare …? And no sooner did I think those thoughts than I noticed that my heart had begun to beat rapidly, and my brain to race and pulse with some feverish kind of excitement. Why? I kept asking. One could say, perhaps, that this might have been the reaction of anyone; and that without their being particularly conscious of it, this combination of bloodstains and splintered glass would be bound to affect them in this manner. Yet I know that the excitement I felt was not of a kind that most people would experience. Moreover, my body-temperature soared, and for a moment I felt uncomfortably hot – which is a rare thing for me these days, as I am usually feeling quite the reverse of that, and find that I need to wear extra or unseasonable clothing, such as the thick tweed coat I wore when I last visited my parents; or the old striped scarf, that I now keep wrapped around my neck, and that I seem to wear at almost any time of the day or night – which I am aware must give me something of an eccentric appearance; as if I am beginning to find some kind of tramp in me, that wants to retreat from public life, and to be imprisoned within the smaller world of his own few personal possessions.

  ‘Then, as I drew close to the pedestrian crossing, where the street lighting was a little stronger, and which had provided the source of light that was being reflected from the pavement and the road, I came to the edge of what one might call this spill of shattered glass – and found, to my astonishment, that instead of stepping around it in order to pass, and in order to continue on my way home, I deliberately stepped into it! Some form of cunning in me made me first check to see that I was alone in the street, and that no one was peering at me from some nearby window; and then (I can recall how I almost trembled as I did this) I crouched down, there on that pavement’s edge, and rubbed my fingertips against the dark stain of what I already felt so sure must be the dark stain of blood.

  ‘And as I touched it, half expecting – indeed, half hoping, I have to confess – that it would still be wet, or would be a little moist, at least, I felt as if some electric charge, or current, had been forced into me; and without hesitation, I spread my palm wide and pressed my entire hand upon the ground, partly grazing myself with some of the sharp chippings of glass, but not caring, even if I had been injured more seriously: even if they had inflicted upon me some more substantial wound; and if I had returned home with a bleeding, lacerated hand.

  ‘Fortunately, the latter didn’t occur, and here I am, after having washed and disinfected the few nicks and grazes I suffered, and wondering what all this has been about.

  ‘I said, when I began this series of notes, that I would do my best to tell the truth in them about myself–warts and wrinkles and all; but it now looks as if it might be something more than a detailed, Flemish portrait I have to paint; as if it is not the outer things I am seeing, with all the defects and imperfections that any flesh is naturally heir to, but some more reluctant – some more lurking kind of figure, that is unaccustomed to the light. Some thing of darkness it would seem that I must acknowledge; and, whether I care to do so or not, that I must recognise as mine!’

  The following morning, Jason received a phone call from his publisher, who said to him, with a hint of annoyance in his voice, that he had rung him several times during the past few weeks, and was wanting to know why he’d not heard from him, or had not seen him for some time. Was he working? he wanted to know. Was there another of his books in the ‘pipeline’, perhaps? One that he could count upon, that is; as well as other various questions of the kind that publishers ask. And reflecting the fact that Jason was a reasonably established figure in the literary world, who was now expected to produce his particular kind of book at regular, well-paced intervals.

  Jason had been delighted by the way in which he had dealt with all this; by saying that yes, he was certainly writing, but not very regularly; and that whether or not it would turn itself into a book he had no idea: which in turn had provoked a further round of questions from his publisher, attempting to coax Jason into revealing exactly what kind of piece of writing it was that he had been speaking about.

  ‘Sounds interesting,’ his publisher had then answered, with a nervous tremble in his voice, after evidently having been baffled by Jason’s replies. ‘Oh, does it?’ Jason then asked, with a light laugh: to which he had added, in order to end the conversation, ‘Well, Roger, all I know is that I am saying things that I have never dared to say in my life. Things which, to be frank with you, I doubt that my readers will enjoy.’

  ‘Oh,’ had been his publisher’s answer to that. ‘Well, we’ll have to see, Jason – won’t we?’: then, with a nervous, high-pitched giggle he had hurriedly put the phone down, and so brought their talk to an end.

  ‘Lottie. You know that woman – the one who lives across the street from me?’

  ‘What woman, Arnold?’

  ‘Oh, you know. The one who wears those enormous strings of pearls and a floppy, velvet blue hat. Lady something or another she is; or she says she is, at least.’

  ‘No,’ said Lottie, with no expression whatsoever, ‘I’ve never heard of her – or seen her, for that matter.’

  ‘But Lottie, you have. I know you have.’

  ‘Well, what about her?’

  ‘What about her? Well, it seems she’s nothing more than a tart.’

  ‘A what?’ said Lottie.

  ‘A tart – a prostitute. Men going in and out of the place all day. Bertie Wooster types, most of them. You know; pink faces – blond, usually; and looking too frightened to wipe their own bottoms.’

  ‘Arnold! What a thing to say!’

  ‘Well – you know what I mean, don’t you, dear? Public school types: puritanical; and looking for a good whipping. Wanting matron to put them across her knee.’

  ‘Where on earth do you get those ideas from, Arnold? Who’s been telling you this? Is it John and Billy?’

  ‘No. It’s got nothing to do with them. I’ve just been keeping a sharp look-out, Lottie – that’s all. Nothing better to do, you see. After all, I’ve got to pass my days doing something – haven’t I? Unless you come round. And especially now, when I’m no longer able to read.’

  ‘Well, I’ve told you about that,’ said Lottie. ‘We’re going to see an optician.’

  ‘Oh, yes, dear; I know we are. Very sweet of you. But I don’t think
they’ll be able to do much for me, you know. I’m going blind, Lottie, and that’s all there is to it.’

  ‘Arnold!’ exclaimed Lottie, alarmed by Arnold’s comment regarding the declining state of his health.

  ‘Well, it’s the truth. And it’s always better to face it. That’s been my motto all my life. But I’m not so blind as yet not to be able to see that that Lady Letitia, or whatever she calls herself, is running some kind of posh, upper-class brothel. Not that it’s really news to me. I’ve always suspected her of it. For one thing, her make-up gives her away. Enough powder on her face to flour a damned pastry-board, I should think.’

  ‘I don’t know that a person’s make-up is a sign of anything,’ said Lottie, reflecting upon what people might think of Arnold.

  ‘Oh, I think it is, Lottie. A true lady doesn’t plaster it on like that – and I should know. Just a light dusting, dear, is all that it needs; to mask the pimples and the sores.’

  ‘Well, what if she does?’ said Lottie. ‘What if she does run a brothel? What difference does it make? It’s not as if she’s someone you actually know, Arnold; so why be bothered by it?’

  ‘Oh, I’m not bothered by it, dear. I quite like it, in fact. To tell you the truth, she’s rather colourful, I find; and far more interesting than those fussy old dears you see around Sloane Square. The ones with their little black, patent court shoes; and their crimpled hair and dresses. No, I like her. She’s got a touch of Nell Gwyn about her, it seems to me. Not that she doles out oranges, as far as I know: though she doles out lots of other things, I expect.’

  ‘And what about your neighbour?’ Lottie then asked, pausing in the act of arranging the curls of her snow-white fringe; that were always made to show a little beneath the brims of her pudding-shaped hats.

  ‘My neighbour? Who do you mean?’

  ‘The one upstairs. The writer. What news is there of him? Do John and Billy still see him?’

  ‘John and Billy? No. I don’t think so. No, they don’t go there now – not any longer. Not since he’s been better.’

  ‘Oh. So he’s better then?’

  ‘Yes. Or at least I think he is – although I’ve not seen him for several days; and even when I did last see him, I didn’t actually speak to him. I just saw him from the landing, as he was about to leave the house. Still, he looked all right; more or less; wearing some kind of funny old scarf around his neck, and looking a little scruffy, I thought; but he’s well, I think; or well enough, considering how he was; though to be frank with you, Lottie, I’ve not given much thought to him of late. We’ve never been close, you know. Just good neighbours. He’s not really my type. Too much of an intellectual one for me.’

  Lottie smiled at this, her taut eyelids quickly pleating themselves as she looked across the room at Arnold, and as they revealed the striking beauty of her purple-violet-blue eyes, which she knew to be the most salient of her features, and that she also knew how to use to some effect.

  Arnold died the following day – or rather during the night-time hours that concluded it; and was found, as he had always said would be the case, in the early part of the next morning. Not by Jason, but by John and Billy, who had been told by Lottie the night before that Arnold wasn’t too well; and after ringing him several times since breakfast but without receiving a reply, had assumed that something must be wrong.

  ‘Stay here,’ John said to Billy, as he crossed the hallway of Arnold’s apartment.

  ‘Why?’ asked Billy, ignoring John’s command: then turning white as he followed John into the living-room and saw the half-naked body of Arnold sprawled out upon the carpet; with his hairpiece free of his head, and lying forlorn and mask-like beside him; and a thick, dried-up trickle of blood that streaked one side of his face.

  ‘John. Is he dead?’ asked Billy in a whisper.

  John nodded. ‘I think so.’

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Billy, nervously.

  ‘We call a doctor,’ John said authoritatively. ‘And you run upstairs; and tell Mr Callow.’

  ‘No, John! I don’t think I can,’ said Billy, as tears formed in his eyes.

  ‘Of course you can,’ said John, knowing that action would be the best thing for his friend. ‘Go and tell him, now. Go on.’

  Which Billy did; knocking gently on Jason’s door and wondering for a moment if he was in.

  ‘Good gracious,’ said Jason, when he came to the door. ‘Billy! Come in. What is it?’

  ‘Arnold is dead,’ said Billy, the tears now flowing freely down his cheeks.

  Jason was silent for a moment. ‘Is John there?’ he then asked.

  ‘Yes. He’s calling a doctor.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jason, worrying that Billy was about to faint, or be sick or something. ‘Here,’ he said, ‘sip this,’ as he poured out a small nip of brandy and handed Billy the glass.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Billy.

  ‘Brandy,’ said Jason.

  ‘I never touch it,’ said Billy, defiantly. ‘Nor whisky either.’

  ‘It’s medicine,’ said Jason insistently, and feeling relieved when Billy obediently took a sip of it.

  ‘Now – are you feeling better?’ Jason then asked, after he had guided Billy to a chair. ‘You were as white as a ghost a few minutes ago’ – to which Billy only nodded in return.

  ‘Now then. Shall we go down?’ Jason said, ‘or would you prefer to stay up here, perhaps?’

  ‘No,’ answered Billy, not liking to be made to feel that he was a weakling. ‘I’ll go down. I’ll come with you.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jason, as he slipped off his dressing gown and as he stepped into a pair of trousers; feeling self-conscious in front of Billy, on account of the ungainly folds of flesh around his middle.

  *

  ‘Mummy. Is Grandad very old?’ Jason’s son, Tom, asked his mother.

  ‘Well, he’s quite old,’ said Jill, who was sitting beside him in the train on the way to Hampshire.

  ‘Yes, but I mean very old – like nearly a hundred or something.’

  ‘Oh, no – of course not!’ said Jill with a laugh. ‘Why do you ask, Tom? Why do you want to know?’

  ‘Because Sarah says that he is – that’s why. Don’t you, Sarah?’

  ‘I said just old, Tom: not a hundred.’

  ‘Well, to be honest,’ said their mother, ‘I don’t know what age he is exactly. But older than your grandmother is, in any case.’

  ‘Than Grandma Callow, you mean,’ said Tom.

  ‘Yes, of course. Quite a lot older, I think.’

  ‘I like him,’ said Sarah, straightening her dress.

  ‘And so do I,’ said Jill, who was looking forward to seeing her in-laws again.

  ‘I prefer Grandma,’ said Tom, as the train came to a halt, and as they arrived at their destination.

  ‘And Mummy; is Daddy going to be there?’ Sarah then asked, as they approached the ticket-barrier, and as her mother handed in the tickets.

  ‘No. I don’t think so,’ Jill answered firmly; but still harbouring a vague hope that they might find him waiting to greet them when they arrived; and seeing Jason in her mind as he had been when they were young, with his curly, auburnish hair tumbling over his ears, and when his smile had at times been almost radiant; and when, as she now suddenly remembered him, he had sometimes been a little clownish in his behaviour.

  ‘No, Sarah,’ Jill then repeated, ‘he won’t, I’m afraid,’ as she and her children climbed into the hired car that had been sent to collect them.

  ‘Oh,’ said Sarah, with a pout, looking at Tom; who knew exactly what his sister was thinking; but who merely blinked his eyes at her in return.

  And as they sped through the leafy lanes and byroads of Hampshire, and as the rays of the late afternoon sun cut low across the fields; piercing the passing trees and hedgerows, and casting a series of constantly changing shadows against the windows of the car; the family fell into silence. As if, all at once, they were sharing the same, collective thoughts
; thoughts that were too deep perhaps for them to voice, and to have brought out into the open; but ones that needed some time of them; as well as a degree of their attention.

  ‘Well,’ said Jill eventually, ‘here we are, I think,’ as the car turned off the road and into a driveway and she saw Betty ahead of her, waving; and beyond her, on the steps of the house, her mother-in-law, who had come out to greet them as well, and who was obviously calling to her husband to suggest that he should do the same thing; and as the children suddenly became a little shy and formal, not quite liking to wave vigorously in return, in the way they remembered having done so very often when they were small, and that was now accompanied by slight pangs of regret.

  ‘Well, Jill,’ said Lilian Callow, once they had all settled in, and after Tom and Sarah had gone off with their grandfather for an evening stroll by the river, ‘it really is good to have you here again. And the children too, of course. I was half frightened, you know, that we’d become cut off from each other; and I am so glad – so grateful – that we haven’t … You still speak to Jason, I gather,’ she then added, ‘and that’s another thing that I am pleased about.’

  ‘Well, there are the children,’ said Jill, ‘so I have to. Not that Jason rings me very much. I’m afraid that I’m the one who usually takes the initiative.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said Lilian.

  ‘Yes, so am I,’ answered Jill. ‘But there –’

  ‘But there, what?’

  ‘But there it is,’ said Jill, first with a sigh and then a smile, and feeling a sudden sense of relief through having been able to express herself in this way. ‘It has to be. I know it now. I seem to have accepted it at last. There are some things that cannot be changed, it seems; that cannot be different from how they are. I don’t think, if I am to be honest, that Jason was ever meant to marry … And perhaps I wasn’t either,’ she then said, out of a wisdom that had formed in her of late, and because she was aware of what dangers there can be in projecting all one’s troubles onto others: a perspective she had acquired since she had gone to live with her mother; and who, to her relief, she had at last ceased to think of as being the source of all that might be unloving in the world.