A Gun for Sale (23 page)

‘That’s a tree all right,’ a voice said. It was the dark girl. She had followed him into the wings; she wasn’t wanted on the stage for the number they were rehearsing. She was short and plump and not very pretty; she sat on a case and watched Mr Davis with gloomy friendliness.

‘Gives a Christmas feeling,’ Mr Davis said.

‘So will a bottle of pop,’ the girl said.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Ruby.’

‘What about meeting me for a spot of lunch after the rehearsal’s over?’

‘Your girls sort of disappear, don’t they?’ Ruby said. ‘I could do with a steak and onions, but I don’t want any conjuring. I’m not a detective’s girl.’

‘What’s that?’ Mr Davis said sharply.

‘She’s the Yard man’s girl. He was round here yesterday.’

‘That’s all right,’ Mr Davis said crossly, thinking hard, ‘you’re safe with me.’

‘You see, I’m unlucky.’

Mr Davis, in spite of his new anxiety, felt alive, vital: this wasn’t
his
last day. The kidneys and bacon he had had for breakfast returned a little in his breath. The music came softly through to them: ‘
Your photograph is just the sweetest half
…’ He licked a little grain of toffee on a back tooth and said, ‘You’re in luck now. You couldn’t have a better mascot than me.’

‘You’ll have to do,’ the girl said with her habitual gloomy stare.

‘The Metropole? At one sharp?’

‘I’ll be there. Unless I’m run over. I’m the kind of girl who
would
get run over before a free feed.’

‘It’ll be fun.’

‘It depends what you call fun,’ the girl said and made room for him on the packing case. They sat side by side staring at the tree. ‘
In your December, I shall remember
.’ Mr Davis put his hand on her bare knee. He was a little awed by the tune,
the
Christmas atmosphere. His hand fell flatly, reverently, like a bishop’s hand on a choirboy’s head.

‘Sinbad,’ the girl said.

‘Sinbad?’

‘I mean Bluebeard. These pantos get one all mixed up.’

‘You aren’t frightened of
me
?’ Mr Davis protested, leaning his head against the postman’s cap.

‘If any girl’s going to disappear, it’ll be me for sure.’

‘She shouldn’t have left me,’ Mr Davis said softly, ‘so soon after dinner. Made me go home alone. She’d have been safe with me.’ He put his arm tentatively round Ruby’s waist and squeezed her, then loosed her hastily as an electrician came along. ‘You’re a clever girl,’ Mr Davis said, ‘you ought to have a part. I bet you’ve got a good voice.’

‘Me a voice? I’ve got as much voice as a peahen.’

‘Give me a little kiss?’

‘Of course I will.’ They kissed rather wetly. ‘What do I call you?’ Ruby asked. ‘It sounds silly to me to call a man who’s standing me a free feed Mister.’

Mr Davis said, ‘You could call me – Willie?’

‘Well,’ Ruby said, sighing gloomily, ‘I hope I’ll be seeing you, Willie. At the Metropole. At one. I’ll be there. I only hope
you
’ll be there or bang’ll go a good steak and onions.’ She drifted back towards the stage. She was needed.
What did Aladdin say
… She said to the girl next her. ‘He fed out of my hand.’
When he came to Pekin?
‘The trouble is,’ Ruby said, ‘I can’t keep them. There’s too much of this love-and-ride-away business. But it looks as if I’ll get a good lunch, anyway.’ She said, ‘There I go again. Saying that and forgetting to cross my fingers.’

Mr Davis had seen enough; he had got what he’d come for; all that had to be done now was to shed a little light and comradeship among the electricians and other employees. He made his way slowly out by way of the dressing-rooms exchanging a word here and there, offering his gold cigarettecase. One never knew. He was fresh to this backstage theatre and it occurred to him that even among the dressers he might find – well, youth and talent, something to be encouraged, and
fed
too, of course, at the Metropole. He soon learnt better; all the dressers were old; they couldn’t understand what he was after and one followed him round everywhere to make sure that he didn’t hide in any of the girls’ rooms. Mr Davis was offended, but he was always polite. He departed through the stage door into the cold tainted street waving his hand. It was about time anyway that he looked in at Midland Steel and saw Sir Marcus.

The High Street was curiously empty except that there were more police about than was usual; he had quite forgotten the gas practice. No one attempted to interfere with Mr Davis, his face was well known to all the force, though none of them could have said what Mr Davis’s occupation was. They would have said, without a smile at the thin hair, the heavy paunch, the plump and wrinkled hands, that he was one of Sir Marcus’s young men. With an employer so old you could hardly avoid being one of the young men by comparison. Mr Davis waved gaily to a sergeant on the other pavement and took a toffee. It was not the job of the police to take casualties to hospital and no one would willingly have obstructed Mr Davis. There was something about his fat good nature which easily turned to malevolence. They watched him with covert amusement and hope sail down the pavement towards the Tanneries, rather as one watches a man of some dignity approach an icy slide. Up the street from the Tanneries a medical student in a gas-mask was approaching.

It was some while before Mr Davis noticed the student and the sight of the gas-mask for a moment quite shocked him. He thought: these pacifists are going too far: sensational nonsense, and when the man halted Mr Davis and said something which he could not catch through the heavy mask, Mr Davis drew himself up and said haughtily, ‘Nonsense. We’re well prepared.’ Then he remembered and became quite friendly again; it wasn’t pacifism after all, it was patriotism. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘I quite forgot. Of course, the practice.’ The anonymous stare through the thickened eyepieces, the muffled voice made him uneasy. He said jocularly, ‘You won’t be taking
me
to the hospital now, will you? I’m a busy man.’ The
student
seemed lost in thought with his hand on Mr Davis’s arm. Mr Davis saw a policeman go grinning down the opposite pavement and he found it hard to restrain his irritation. There was a little fog still left in the upper air and a flight of planes drove through it, filling the street with their deep murmur, out towards the south and the aerodrome. ‘You see,’ Mr Davis said, keeping his temper, ‘the practice is over. The sirens will be going any moment now. It would be too absurd to waste a morning at the hospital. You know me. Davis is the name. Everyone in Nottwich knows me. Ask the police there. No one can accuse
me
of being a bad patriot.’

‘You think it’s nearly over?’ the man said.

‘I’m glad to see you boys enthusiastic,’ Mr Davis said. ‘I expect we’ve met some time at the hospital. I’m up there for all the big functions and I never forget a voice. Why,’ Mr Davis said, ‘it was me who gave the biggest contribution to the new operating theatre.’ Mr Davis would have liked to walk on, but the man blocked his way and it seemed a bit undignified to step into the road and go round him. The man might think he was trying to escape: there might be a tussle, and the police were looking on from the corner. A sudden venom spurted up into Mr Davis’s mind like the ink a cuttlefish shoots, staining his thoughts with its dark poison. That grinning ape in uniform … I’ll have him dismissed … I’ll see Calkin about it. He talked on cheerily to the man in the gas-mask, a thin figure, little more than a boy’s figure on which the white medical coat hung loosely. ‘You boys,’ Mr Davis said, ‘are doing a splendid work. There’s no one appreciates that more than I do. If war comes –’

‘You call yourself Davis,’ the muffled voice said.

Mr Davis said with sudden irritation, ‘You’re wasting my time. I’m a busy man. Of course I’m Davis.’ He checked his rising temper with an effort. ‘Look here. I’m a reasonable man. I’ll pay anything you like to the hospital. Say, ten pounds ransom.’

‘Yes,’ the man said, ‘where is it?’

‘You can trust me,’ Mr Davis said, ‘I don’t carry that much on me,’ and was amazed to hear what sounded like a laugh.
This
was going too far. ‘All right,’ Mr Davis said, ‘you can come with me to my office and I’ll pay you the money. But I shall expect a proper receipt from your treasurer.’

‘You’ll get your receipt,’ the man said in his odd toneless mask-muffled voice and stood on one side to let Mr Davis lead the way. Mr Davis’s good humour was quite restored. He prattled on. ‘No good offering you a toffee in that thing,’ he said. A messenger boy passed in a gas-mask with his cap cocked absurdly on the top of it; he whistled derisively at Mr Davis. Mr Davis went a little pink. His fingers itched to tear the hair, to pull the ear, to twist the wrist. ‘The boys enjoy themselves,’ he said. He became confiding; a doctor’s presence always made him feel safe and oddly important: one could tell the most grotesque things to a doctor about one’s digestion and it was as much material for them as an amusing anecdote was for a professional humourist. He said, ‘I’ve been getting hiccups badly lately. After every meal. It’s not as if I eat fast … but, of course, you’re only a student still. Though you know more about these things than I do. Then too I get spots before my eyes. Perhaps I ought to cut down my diet a bit. But it’s difficult. A man in my position has a lot of entertaining to do. For instance –’ he grasped his companion’s unresponsive arm and squeezed it knowingly – ‘it would be no good my promising you that I’d go without my lunch today. You medicos are men of the world and I don’t mind telling you I’ve got a little girl meeting me. At the Metropole. At one.’ Some association of ideas made him feel in his pocket to make sure his packet of toffee was safe.

They passed another policeman and Mr Davis waved his hand. His companion was very silent. The boy’s shy, Mr Davis thought, he’s not used to walking about town with a man like me: it excused a certain roughness in his behaviour; even the suspicion Mr Davis had resented was probably only a form of gawkiness. Mr Davis, because the day was proving fine after all, a little sun sparkling through the cold obscured air, because the kidneys and bacon had really been done to a turn, because he had asserted himself in the presence of Miss Maydew, who was the daughter of a peer, because he had a date at
the
Metropole with a little girl of talent, because too by this time Raven’s body would be safely laid out on its icy slab in the mortuary, for all these reasons Mr Davis felt kindness and Christmas in his spirit; he exerted himself to put the boy at his ease. He said, ‘I feel sure we’ve met somewhere. Perhaps the house surgeon introduced us.’ But his companion remained glumly unforthcoming. ‘A fine sing-song you all put on at the opening of the new ward.’ He glanced again at the delicate wrists. ‘You weren’t by any chance the boy who dressed up as a girl and sang that naughty song?’ Mr Davis laughed thickly at the memory, turning into the Tanneries, laughed as he had laughed more times than he could count over the port, at the club, among the good fellows, at the smutty masculine jokes, ‘I was tickled to death.’ He put his hand on his companion’s arm and pushed through the glass door of Midland Steel.

A stranger stepped out from round a corner and the clerk behind the inquiries counter told him in a strained voice, ‘That’s all right. That’s Mr Davis.’

‘What’s all this?’ Mr Davis asked in a harsh no-nonsense voice, now that he was back where he belonged.

The detective said, ‘We are just keeping an eye open.’

‘Raven?’ Mr Davis asked in a rather shrill voice. The man nodded. Mr Davis said, ‘You let him escape? What fools …’

The detective said, ‘You needn’t be scared. He’ll be spotted at once if he comes out of hiding. He can’t escape this time.’

‘But why,’ Mr Davis said, ‘are you here? Why do you expect …’

‘We’ve got our orders,’ the man said.

‘Have you told Sir Marcus?’

‘He knows.’

Mr Davis looked tired and old. He said sharply to his companion, ‘Come with me and I’ll give you the money. I haven’t any time to waste.’ He walked with lagging hesitating feet down a passage paved with some black shining composition to the glass lift-shaft. The man in the gas-mask followed him down the passage and into the lift; they moved slowly and
steadily
upwards together, as intimate as two birds caged. Floor by floor the great building sank below them, a clerk in a black coat hurrying on some mysterious errand which required a lot of blotting paper, a girl standing outside a closed door with a file of papers whispering to herself, rehearsing some excuse, an errand boy walking erratically along a passage balancing a bundle of new pencils on his head. They stopped at an empty floor.

There was something on Mr Davis’s mind. He walked slowly, turned the handle of his door softly, almost as if he feared that someone might be waiting for him inside. But the room was quite empty. An inner door opened, and a young woman with fluffy gold hair and exaggerated horn spectacles said, ‘Willie’, and then saw his companion. She said, ‘Sir Marcus wants to see you, Mr Davis.’

‘That’s all right, Miss Connett,’ Mr Davis said. ‘You might go and find me an ABC.’

‘Are you going away – at once?’

Mr Davis hesitated. ‘Look me up what trains there are for town – after lunch.’

‘Yes, Mr Davis.’ She withdrew and the two of them were alone. Mr Davis shivered slightly and turned on his electric fire. The man in the gas-mask spoke and again the muffled coarse voice pricked at Mr Davis’s memory. ‘Are you scared of something?’

‘There’s a madman loose in this town,’ Mr Davis said. His nerves were alert at every sound in the corridor outside, a footstep, the ring of a bell. It had needed more courage than he had been conscious of possessing to say ‘after lunch’, he wanted to be away at once, clear away from Nottwich. He started at the scrape of a little cleaner’s platform which was being lowered down the wall of the inner courtyard. He padded to the door and locked it; it gave him a better feeling of security to be locked into his familiar room, with his desk, his swivel chair, the cupboard where he kept two glasses and a bottle of sweet port, the bookcase, which contained a few technical works on steel, a
Whitaker’s
, a
Who’s Who
and a copy of
His Chinese Concubine
, than to remember the
detective
in the hall. He took everything in like something seen for the first time, and it was true enough that he had never so realized the peace and comfort of his small room. Again he started at the creak of the ropes from which the cleaner’s platform hung. He shut down his double window. He said in a tone of nervous irritation, ‘Sir Marcus can wait.’