It was raining and the night was dark. Once in the Royal Borough of Kensington, the taxi driver went more slowly, keeping an eye on street names. He obviously didn’t come here very often. Tall old houses, once the homes of a prosperous middle class, plaster and paint peeling, men standing at the doors, shabby cars, milk bottles on window-sills, papers blowing. The L.C.C. had been at work; great surgical operations to remove a canker and replace it with brown aseptic blocks of modem flats; but the dacay was going on. Respectability persisted among it, healthy wood among the dry rot.
The driver stopped at a little corner shop outside which a few rain-sodden news posters flapped. It was twenty-five to seven and the shop was shut. Bennie got out and tried the door. It was locked. There was a light in the back of the shop so she knocked. No one came. A blowsy woman pushing a pram came past. “They close at six, dear,” she said.
As Bennie turned away there was shuffling feet, and Mrs Richter came out of the alley at the side of the shop.
“Miss Marlowe, I was brushing-up and I heard you knock. I waited thinking you might come.”
“I was afraid I was too late! Come in the taxi out of the rain.”
“No, it is down the next street. Pay it off and we well walk. A taxi draws attention, do you not think?”
Bennie paid the taxi. “What makes you think you have found—my friend?”
Mrs Richter shrugged her narrow shoulders. “I do not think. But it is this way. There is a Welshman called Rhys. He is a carrier of messages, of news. He is always in and out of the shop. Three days ago he ordered a Times. We do not stock it—it is not much in demand here. Each day he collects it—also other dailies. ‘Wealthy friend’, he says to me with a wink. I say, ‘tell me about him’. He winks again and will not tell. But tins morning when he comes in for cigarettes I say to him ‘they are for your friend, the young man with the black hair and the limp?’ and he stares at me as if I have called up a ghost.”
They began to walk down the street. Under the lamps the wit pavements glimmered like cellulose. Bennie said: “Do you know where he is likely to be?”
Mrs Richter buttoned the collar of her dirty raincoat. “I know where Rhys lives. I think if it is the right man he will not be far away.”
They turned into a narrow cul-de-sac. The rain had driven most people indoors, but two children argued in thin voices from a doorstep, and a man tinkered, ill-temperedly with an old car, the water dripping into the engine off the brim of his crinkled velour.
“It is that one at the end where Rhys lives,” said Mrs Richter.
As they came to the doorstep a train screamed past in the darkness beyond the house, a vivid rush of smoke and furnace and flickering carriages. When it had gone a cat dropped from the wall and slid up to the door of the house waiting for it to be opened. Someone was playing a harmonica.
“It is no good ringing a bell here,” said Mrs Richter.
She opened the door and the cat was through in a second, streaking up the lighted stairs. No one about. Mrs Richter knocked on the door on her right. At the second knock it was opened by a big bald man in a stained boiler suit with a pink newspaper in his hand.
“Please,” said Mrs Richter, “ we want the young man who is new here. The young man with the black hair.”
The big man stared at them both suspiciously, then out through the open door to see if anyone was with them.
“Top floor first right,” he said and slammed the door in Mrs Richter’s face.
Mrs Richter did not blink. “Shall I come up with you, Miss Marlowe?”
“Thank you, no. But … would you wait? I’ll call down—or come down again.”
“Of course.”
The first flight was uncarpeted, the landing above in darkness. Odd smell. The harmonica player had stopped. Bennie stumbled on a piece of old matting; her heel got caught in a hole in it. Someone was frying chips. She tried to find the switch for the next flight but couldn’t, so went up it in the dark.
This was the top. Three doors. Light under two of them. Bennie tapped on the first of them, which was to the right of the stairs. No answer. She pushed back a damp streak of hair and tried the handle. The door opened on a room that was empty of furniture except for a single iron bedstead. The floor was gravelly with dirt. On the bed sitting cross-legged was a Negro. He had short khaki trousers, two sacks over his naked shoulders. He was watching her very intently. Bennie muttered a half-swallowed apology and backed out.
The other door faced her. She knocked loudly, anxious now to have done with it. “ Who’s that?” said a voice. It was Michael’s.
“Bennie,” she said.
There was a short pause, a scuffling sound and then the door was open. He gathered her into his arms.
“Bennie,” he said, in delight, in alarm. “ I still don’t know how you got here. Did Dick Ballance.…”
She explained, short of breath after running down and telling Mrs Richter that her guess had been right. But short of breath not just for that. Michael looked pale, otherwise not ill, except for——
“You limp,” she said. “ So you were hurt? Tell me about it.”
He had shut the door and locked it again.
She said a second time: “Tell me about it.”
“Oh, Bennie, it’s so good to see you.” He came to her, took her coat, then put his face against her face, smelling her skin, resting there.
She said quietly: “What happened, Michael?”
“God, I’ve been such a fool!.…”
They were silent for a time. Then after a bit she sat on the bed and he took a chair opposite her, less than a foot away. He had gone much thinner.
“I was going to come to see you in a few days. I had to know how you felt about it all. I had to know if you could still give me some part of your love.”
She said: “Michael, it isn’t a thing you give and take back.”
“But knowing how you feel about these things.…”
“How do you know how I feel about these things?”
“Well, you have such a strong sense of values, and.…”
“I have a sense of values, maybe, but it isn’t … Michael, I don’t love a person because they’re good. I love them because I love them. Once that is so, there’s no good or bad in it.”
He went on looking at her. “ You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“I’ve been sick with worry. Was it your leg?”
He nodded. “ It’s all right now.”
They didn’t speak for a long time; they were content to look at each other. Then she said: “Can you tell me?”
He nodded again and began from the beginning, right from the beginning of the first challenge and bet over the radiogram, through the Any Questions affair and the quarrel with Boy, to the last misadventure.
As he talked she noticed the change in him. She hadn’t been aware before of a lack of frankness, but now she saw the difference. He was talking no longer to someone whose love he was anxious to gain but to someone who knew him and had no fears.
She suddenly felt she understood him better. She realised the tremendous dynamo of energy and drive there was in him and the necessity of its finding an outlet. Whatever mistakes he had made had been mistakes deriving from this excess, differently directed it was as liable to produce an abundance of good. It could be so directed, not by her but by himself—with normal luck, if it once got moving in the right way.… This misadventure might yet help to set it on that way.
As she looked at him she thought that in the space of only a few weeks his face had become much more sensitive; it was a face with power in it that mustn’t be wasted.
She was not depressed by the story of petty crime, nor by the fix they were in now: she saw beyond it because by her new understanding of him she could look over the head of the present mess and see how it could be in the future.
“This is like it must always be,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud.
He knew at once what she meant
. “ I can’t tell you how happy I am—and how miserable I am. It doesn’t seem possible to be both at the same time.”
“What are we going to do?”
The windows rattled as an express went past. Hardly had the sound died away than another train came, a goods train, stammering uncertainly along a siding.
“Thank you at least for the ‘we’.”
“It’s always got to be ‘we’ from now on, Michael.”
“Bennie, you’re wonderful”
“No, I’m not wonderful at all. It’s only these last few weeks that I’ve begun to get things straight—really straight—in my own mind.”
He touched her damp hair. Then he began to kiss her. He kissed her like a thirsty man after a drought. He said: “I didn’t believe you’d ever be so good about it. I thought you’d want me to give myself up.”
She didn’t answer. He pulled away and looked at her very closely. “Do you?”
She shook her head. “ Michael, I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to be the best thing to do—I mean best for you. It’s something we’ve obviously got to talk over at—at leisure, once we’re out of this place.”
“I don’t see how I can get out of this place until that’s decided.”
“Well, my darling, it’s something I just can’t decide for you.”
He got up then and walked over to tie window. “I think you have to, Bennie.”
She could see all his energies, in prison, turning in on himself and devouring the man she was just beginning to know. “ Then it must be no, at least—for the present.”
He said: “ I’ve given you some pretty nasty moments since we met. Perhaps that’s the nastiest. Anyway, let’s leave it open for the moment … I’ve been watching the papers, to see if there’s any mention of Peter being charged. I must have missed it.”
“No, you haven’t. Peter’s in hospital. He’s not been charged by the police.”
“But I saw him arrested.”
“Where? How?”
He told her. “That’s how I knew they were coming for me. I knew I only had a few minutes to get away.”
“Peter’s in hospital.” She told him of her visit to his flat.
“Beaten up?” Michael said incredulously. “It’s just not possible. That car was the police.…”
“Were there policemen in it?”
“Yes.… Well, I took them for that. It was a Wolseley and one of them had a blue coat and a flat-topped cap. Do you mean.…” He looked at her. “ It could have been Kenny and the others! Peter was always nervous about them!”
She said: “ Think, Michael. How else do you know you’re wanted by the police?”
“I don’t.…” He came across and took her hands. His eyes were full of anxiety. “Listen, let me think this over carefully.…”
They went over it together, step by step. It was life and death they should be sure.
“What else connects you with the robbery? Michael, what else?”
“Nothing, as far as I know. Bennie … I think I’ve been a complete fool—running away from my own—my own shadow!” He put his hands up to his face and limped round the room. “Let me think, let me think.… The police haven’t been to you?”
“No.”
“Nor to Dad as far as you know?”
“No. He was in court today. I think if he’d known anything he would have asked me.…”
“Oh, God,” he said, and sat down. “I think I’m going to pass out. Give me something to drink … I—I.…” But before she could move he was up again. “Don’t you see, darling, darling; I thought I was wanted by the police, and all I’m involved in is some—some footling little gang feud. Perhaps not even that. Perhaps they’ve taken it out on Peter, and that.…” He let out a gasp. “ Thank God! Darling, darling, darling!” He took her in his arms again and smothered her with kisses. “You’ve brought me not only your—your love and forgiveness, you’ve brought me my life!”
They hugged each other and tried to laugh; but there was too much relief in the laughter and it caught at them and came close to tears.
They went over it once more, just to be utterly certain. “It means we can go,” she said. “ We can leave here together tonight. Or we could except for one thing. There’s still one danger. Boy Kenny.”
“Oh! … what does he matter?”
“He might. He very well could. I don’t want you—left behind a bush on Clapham Common.” She told him of her visit to the Middle Pocket.
Michael listened but not very soberly. Perhaps because he was physically much stronger, he had always taken a less serious view than Peter of the Kenny threat. Now his relief was so great that he could hardly count it at all. Only when Bennie told him of her feeling of being followed one evening did he give it some attention.
“You don’t think you were followed here?”
“I don’t think so. But when we leave I’ll go for a taxi first, bring it here. If anybody’s watching they’ll think you’re staying behind. When I bring the taxi you can come out quickly and get straight into it.”
He took her hands again. “Bennie, will you marry me very soon? Please, very soon. The action’s over. There’s nothing in our way. There’s no more need to wait.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Tomorrow? Or Friday? One day this week?”
“All right,” she said, but with a slight hesitation that he instantly saw.
“With conditions?”
She smiled. “No conditions. But you do see, don’t you, it must be on money that’s properly ours?”
“Of course.” He nodded, but bit at his thumb. “What am I going to do with this other money?”
“You have some here?”
“Yes. All there is. About eight hundred pounds.”
She whistled. “ Can it go back?”
“No. It’s money from the sale of goods. They’ll be insured. I could only send this money to the underwriters.”
She said: “ Couldn’t you send it to the police? With an anonymous note saying what it’s from and asking them to dispose of it? In a rather twisted way our conscience would be clearer. And—if you were ever traced—it would do you no harm.”
Michael thought. “Yes. Of course you’re right.”
“Darling, it isn’t a matter of eight hundred pounds, it’s a question of our starting off together on the right foot.”
“I know. I know. I wasn’t seriously hesitating; of course it’s got to go.” He stared round the room. “Just think, I can walk out of here tonight, never come back. And we can go on living in London, Bennie! Eight hundred pounds! It’s worth eight thousand! It’s been—pretty terrible this last week. Tonight I’m a millionaire!”
They sat and talked for a quarter of an hour. Then she helped him to pack his suitcase. He went to a piece of the skirting board and prised it out with a chisel. He had hollowed away the plaster behind, and here, wrapped in four bundles, were the notes. He didn’t seem to know what to do with them. Abruptly he gave them to Bennie.
“You keep them. They’re yours absolutely to do with what you want.”
She took them gingerly. “They won’t all go in my bag. Put them in the suitcase.”
“No, we’ll split them. I can carry half in my pocket.”
They glanced round the room. Nothing left.
“Stay here,” she said. “I’ll get a taxi.”
“It may be a job in this district. I know. Go next door. Rhys, the Welshman, says they’ve got a call box in the hall. Nobody will stop you, and you can ring the taxi rank on Westbourne Green. I’ve got the number here.”
“Right,” she said.
“A better idea: I’ll come downstairs with you and get Rhys to ring for us. Wasn’t there a harmonica playing when you came up?”
They went to the door and he unlocked it and opened it. Coming towards him across the landing were Boy Kenny and Adam.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Kenny took a jump at the door as Michael slammed it.
The door creaked and cracked but the catch held. As the handle was wrenched from the outside Michael turned the key. For the moment there was nothing but the sound of breathing on both sides of the door. Then the footsteps went away and there was the sound of another door opening and voices.
“Oh, God,” said Bennie, “ I’ve led them to you.”
Michael didn’t speak, but got hold of the bed and dragged it screaming on its rollers end-on against the door. They lifted the old wooden washstand and leaned it against the top part of the door.
“They’ll get in easily if they want to,” Michael said. He looked round and picked up the chisel. He was quite calm.
“Oh, darling,” Bennie breathed. “How can we get help?”
“We can’t—not yet. Wait.”
As he stopped, some sort of metal was forced against the flimsy catch of the door. The whole door creaked and strained, but the metal snapped first. There was more fumbling and scratching.
“Who’s below us?” Bennie said. “ Couldn’t we——”
“Girls. Anyway in these places nobody interferes unless they have to. Here!”
The window screeched as he flung up the sash. “See this window box: it’s iron. That one belongs to the house next door. Think you could reach across?”
“I could try. But you?”
“Yes, easily. There’s the drainpipe to hold to. Can you go first?”
“No, you,” said Bennie. “Then you can help me.”
The door was creaking again. Michael wriggled out. As he got out, holding with fingertips to the frame of the window, a mail train went past, making the house shiver. Michael moved one hand to the drainpipe, stretched with his foot for the window-box. The other window was closed and he kicked it in with the toe of his shoe.
Behind them the catch burst. The bed was squealing. Bennie slid one leg out of the window as Michael got across, but before she could follow a hand clutched her by the collar of her frock and hauled her choking into the room. Someone hit her on the side of the face.
Both men in the room. Boy said: “ Blast ’im; he’s through! Nest door. You go this way: I’ll cut him off.”
The Tumbled House Page 38