A Gun for Sale (14 page)

As he moved away he saw a sixpence in the gutter. He picked it up and went back the way he had come to the last chocolate slot machine he had passed. It was outside a sweet shop and next a church hall, where a queue of women waited along the pavement for some kind of sale to open. They were getting noisy and impatient; it was after the hour when the doors should have opened, and he thought what fine game they would be for a really expert bag-picker. They were pressed against each other and would never notice a little pressure on the clasp. There was nothing personal in the thought; he had never fallen quite so low, he believed, as picking women’s bags. But it made him idly pay attention to them, as he walked along the line. One stood out from the others, carried by an old rather dirty woman, new, expensive, sophisticated, of a kind he had seen before; he remembered at once the occasion, the little bathroom, the raised pistol, the compact she had taken from the bag.

The door was opened and the women pushed in; almost at once he was alone on the pavement beside the slot machine and the jumble-sale poster: ‘Entrance 6d.’ It couldn’t be her bag, he told himself, there must be hundreds like it, but nevertheless he pursued it through the pitch-pine door. ‘And lead us not into temptation,’ the vicar was saying from a dais at one end of the hall above the old hats and the chipped vases
and
the stacks of women’s underwear. When the prayer was finished he was flung by the pressure of the crowd against a stall of fancy goods: little framed amateur water-colours of lakeland scenery, gaudy cigarette boxes from Italian holidays, brass ashtrays and a row of discarded novels. Then the crowd lifted him and pushed on towards the favourite stall. There was nothing he could do about it. He couldn’t seek for any individual in the crowd, but that didn’t matter, for he found himself pressed against a stall, on the other side of which the old woman stood. He leant across and stared at the bag; he remembered how the girl had said, ‘My name’s Anne,’ and there, impressed on the leather, was a faint initial A, where a chromium letter had been removed. He looked up, he didn’t notice that there was another man beside the stall, his eyes were filled with the image of a dusty wicked face.

He was shocked by it just as he had been shocked by Mr Cholmondeley’s duplicity. He felt no guilt about the old War Minister, he was one of the great ones of the world, one of those who ‘sat’, he knew all the right words, he was educated, ‘in the chief seats at the synagogues’, and if he was sometimes a little worried by the memory of the secretary’s whisper through the imperfectly shut door, he could always tell himself that he had shot her in self-defence. But this was evil : that people of the same class should prey on each other. He thrust himself along the edge of the stall until he was by her side. He bent down. He whispered, ‘How did you get that bag?’ but an arrowhead of predatory women forced themselves between; she couldn’t even have seen who had whispered to her. As far as she knew it might have been a woman mistaking it for a bargain on one of the stalls, but nevertheless the question had scared her. He saw her elbowing her way to the door and he fought to follow her.

When he got out of the hall she was just in sight, trailing her long old-fashioned skirt round a corner. He walked fast. He didn’t notice in his hurry that he in his turn was followed by a man whose clothes he would immediately have recognized, the soft hat and overcoat worn like a uniform. Very soon he began to remember the road they took; he had been
this
way with the girl. It was like retracing in mind an old experience. A newspaper shop would come in sight next moment, a policeman had stood just there, he had intended to kill her, to take her out somewhere beyond the houses and shoot her quite painlessly in the back. The wrinkled deep malice in the face he had seen across the stall seemed to nod at him: ‘You needn’t worry, we have seen to all that for you.’

It was incredible how quickly the old woman scuttled. She held the bag in one hand, lifted the absurd long skirt with the other; she was like a female Rip Van Winkle who had emerged from her sleep in the clothes of fifty years ago. He thought: they’ve done something to her, but who are ‘they’? She hadn’t been to the police; she’d believed his story; it was only to Cholmondeley’s advantage that she should disappear. For the first time since his mother died he was afraid for someone else, because he knew too well that Cholmondeley had no scruples.

Past the station she turned to the left up Khyber Avenue, a line of dingy apartment houses. Coarse grey lace quite hid the interior of little rooms save when a plant in a jardinière pressed glossy green palms against the glass between the lace. There were no bright geraniums lapping up the air behind closed panes: those scarlet flowers belong to a poorer class than the occupants of Khyber Avenue, to the exploited. In Khyber Avenue they had progressed to the aspidistra of the small exploiters. They were all Cholmondeleys on a tiny scale. Outside No. 61 the old woman had to wait and fumble for her key; it gave Raven time to catch her up. He put his foot against the closing door and said, ‘I want to ask you some questions.’

‘Get out,’ the old woman said. ‘We don’t ’ave anything to do with your sort.’

He pressed the door steadily open. ‘You’d better listen,’ he said. ‘It’d be good for you.’ She stumbled backwards amongst the crowded litter of the little dark hall: he noted it all with hatred: the glass case with a stuffed pheasant, the moth-eaten head of a stag picked up at a country auction to act as a hatstand, the black metal umbrella-holder painted with gold
stars
, the little pink glass shade over the gas-jet. He said, ‘Where did you get that bag? Oh,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t take much to make me squeeze your old neck.’

‘Acky!’ the old woman screamed. ‘Acky!’

‘What do you do here, eh?’ He opened one of the two doors at random off the hall and saw a long cheap couch with the ticking coming through the cover, a large gilt mirror, a picture of a naked girl knee-deep in the sea; the place reeked of scent and stale gas.

‘Acky!’ the old woman screamed again. ‘Acky!’

He said, ‘So that’s it, eh? You old bawd,’ and turned back into the hall. But she was supported now. She had Acky with her; he had come through to her side from the back of the house on rubber-soled shoes, making no sound. Tall and bald, with a shifty pious look, he faced Raven. ‘What d’you want, my man?’ He belonged to a different class altogether: a good school and a theological college had formed his accent; something else had broken his nose.

‘What names!’ the old woman said, turning on Raven from under Acky’s protecting arm.

Raven said, ‘I’m in a hurry. I don’t want to break up this place. Tell me where you got that bag.’

‘If you refer to my wife’s reticule,’ the bald man said, ‘it was given her – was it not, Tiny? – by a lodger.’

‘When?’

‘A few nights ago.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘She only stayed one night.’

‘Why did she give her bag to you?’

‘We only pass this way once,’ Acky said, ‘and therefore – you know the quotation?’

‘Was she alone?’

‘Of course she wasn’t alone,’ the old woman said. Acky coughed, put his hand over her face and pushed her gently behind him. ‘Her betrothed,’ he said, ‘was with her.’ He advanced towards Raven. ‘That face,’ he said, ‘is somehow familiar. Tiny, my dear, fetch me a copy of the
Journal
.’

‘No need,’ Raven said. ‘It’s me all right.’ He said, ‘You’ve
lied
about that bag. If the girl was here, it was last night. I’m going to search this bawdy house of yours.’

‘Tiny,’ her husband said, ‘go out at the back and call the police.’ Raven’s hand was on his gun, but he didn’t move, he didn’t draw it, his eyes were on the old woman as she trailed indeterminately through the kitchen door. ‘Hurry, Tiny, my dear.’

Raven said, ‘If I thought she was going, I’d shoot you straight, but she’s not going to any police. You’re more afraid of them than I am. She’s in the kitchen now hiding in a corner.’

Acky said, ‘Oh no, I assure you she’s gone; I heard the door; you can see for yourself,’ and as Raven passed him he raised his hand and struck with a knuckle-duster at a spot behind Raven’s ear.

But Raven had expected that. He ducked his head and was safely through in the kitchen doorway with his gun out. ‘Stay put,’ he said. ‘This gun doesn’t make any noise. I’ll plug you where you’ll feel it if you move.’ The old woman was where he had expected her to be, between the dresser and the door squeezed in a corner. She moaned, ‘Oh, Acky, you ought to ’ave ’it ’im.’

Acky began to swear. The obscenity trickled out of his mouth effortlessly like dribble, but the tone, the accent never changed; it was still the good school, the theological college. There were a lot of Latin words Raven didn’t understand. He said impatiently, ‘Now where’s the girl?’ But Acky simply didn’t hear; he stood there in a kind of nervous seizure with his pupils rolled up almost under the lids; he might have been praying; for all Raven knew some of the Latin words might be prayers: ‘
Saccus stercoris
’, ‘
fauces
’. He said again: ‘Where’s the girl?’

‘Leave ’im alone,’ the old woman said. ‘’E can’t ’ear you. Acky,’ she moaned from her corner by the dresser, ‘it’s all right, love, you’re at ’ome.’ She said fiercely to Raven, ‘The things they did to ’im.’

Suddenly the obscenity stopped. He moved and blocked the kitchen door. The hand with the knuckle-duster grasped the lapel of his coat. Acky said softly, ‘After all, my Lord
Bishop
, you too, I am sure – in your day – among the haycocks,’ and tittered.

Raven said, ‘Tell him to move. I’m going to search this house.’ He kept his eye on both of them. The little stuffy house wore on his nerves, madness and wickedness moved in the kitchen. The old woman watched him with hatred from her corner. Raven said, ‘My God, if you’ve killed her …’ He said, ‘Do you know what it feels like to have a bullet in your belly? You’ll just lie there and bleed …’ It seemed to him that it would be like shooting a spider. He suddenly shouted to her husband, ‘Get out of my way.’

Acky said, ‘Even St Augustine …’ watching him with glazed eyes, barring the door. Raven struck him in the face, then backed out of reach of the flailing arm. He raised his pistol and the woman screamed at him, ‘Stop! I’ll get ’im out.’ She said, ‘Don’t you dare to touch Acky. They’ve treated ’im bad enough in ’is day.’ She took her husband’s arm; she only came half-way to his shoulder, grey and soiled and miserably tender. ‘Acky, dear,’ she said, ‘come into the parlour.’ She rubbed her old wicked wrinkled face against his sleeve. ‘Acky, there’s a letter from the bishop.’

His pupils moved down again like those of a doll. He was almost himself again. He said, ‘Tut-tut! I gave way, I think, to a little temper.’ He looked at Raven with half-recognition. ‘That fellow’s still here, Tiny.’

‘Come into the parlour, Acky dear. I’ve got to talk to you.’ He let her pull him away into the hall and Raven followed them and mounted the stairs. All the way up he heard them talking. They were planning something between them; as like as not when he was out of sight and round the corner they’d slip out and call the police. If the girl was really not here or if they had disposed of her, they had little to fear from the police. On the first-floor landing there was a tall cracked mirror; he came up the stairs into its reflection, unshaven chin, hare-lip and ugliness. His heart beat against his ribs; if he had been called on to fire now, quickly, in self-defence, his hand and eye would have failed him. He thought hopelessly: this is ruin. I’m losing grip, a skirt’s got me down. He opened
the
first door to hand and came into what was obviously the best bedroom, a wide double-bed with a flowery eiderdown, veneered walnut furniture, a little embroidered bag for hair combings, a tumbler of Lysol on the washstand for someone’s false teeth. He opened the big wardrobe door and a musty smell of old clothes and camphor balls came out at him. He went to the closed window and looked out at Khyber Avenue, and all the while he looked he could hear the whispers from the parlour: Acky and Tiny plotting together. His eye for a moment noted a large rather clumsy-looking man in a soft hat chatting to a woman at the house opposite; another man came up the road and they strolled together out of sight. He recognized the police at once. They mightn’t, of course, have seen him there, they might be engaged on a purely routine inquiry. He went quickly out on to the landing and listened: Acky and Tiny were quite silent now. He thought at first they might have left the house, but when he listened carefully he could hear the faint whistling of the old woman’s breath somewhere near the foot of the stairs.

There was another door on the landing. He tried the handle. It was locked. He wasn’t going to waste any more time with the old people downstairs. He shot through the lock and crashed the door open. But there was no one there. The room was empty. It was a tiny room almost filled by its double-bed, its dead fireplace hidden by a smoked brass trap. He looked out of the window and saw nothing but a small stone yard, a dustbin, a high sooty wall keeping out neighbours, the grey waning afternoon light. On the washstand was a wireless set, and the wardrobe was empty. He had no doubt what this room was used for.

But something made him stay: some sense uneasily remaining in the room of someone’s terror. He couldn’t leave it, and there was the locked door to be accounted for. Why should they have locked up an empty room unless it held some clue, some danger to themselves? He turned over the pillows of the bed and wondered, his hand loose on the pistol, his brain stirring with another’s agony. Oh, to know, to know. He felt the painful weakness of a man who had depended always on his
gun
. I’m educated, aren’t I, the phrase came mockingly into his mind, but he knew that one of the police out there could discover in this room more than he. He knelt down and looked under the bed. Nothing there. The very tidiness of the room seemed unnatural, as if it had been tidied after a crime. Even the mats looked as if they had been shaken.

He asked himself whether he had been imagining things. Perhaps the girl had really given the old woman her bag? But he couldn’t forget that they had lied about the night she’d stayed with them, had picked the initial off the bag. And they had locked this door. But people did lock doors – against burglars, but in that case surely they left the key on the outside. Oh, there was an explanation, he was only too aware of that, for everything; why should you leave another person’s initials on a bag? When you had many lodgers, naturally you forgot which night … There were explanations, but he couldn’t get over the impression that something had happened here, that something had been tidied away, and it came over him with a sense of great desolation that only he could not call in the police to find this girl. Because he was an outlaw she had to be an outlaw too.
Ah, Christ! that it were possible
. The rain beating on the Weevil, the plaster child, the afternoon light draining from the little stone yard, the image of his own ugliness fading in the mirror, and from below stairs Tiny’s whistling breath.
For one short hour to see
…