A Gun for Sale (8 page)

Raven said, ‘Keep back against that wall or I’ll shoot.’

‘You’re all in.’

‘That doesn’t matter to you.’

‘Well, I suppose I’m human,’ Anne said. ‘You haven’t done me any harm yet.’

He said, ‘This doesn’t mean anything. I’m just tired.’ He looked along the bare dusty boards of the unfinished kitchen. He tried to swagger. ‘I’m tired of living in hotels. I’d like to fix up this kitchen. I learned to be an electrician once. I’m educated.’ He said: ‘“Sleepy Nuik”. It’s a good name when you are tired. But they’ve gone and spelt “Nook” wrong.’

‘Let me go,’ Anne said. ‘You can trust me. I’ll not say a thing. I don’t even know who you are.’

He laughed miserably. ‘Trust you. I’d say I can. When you get into the town you’ll see my name in the papers and my description, what I’m wearing, how old I am. I never stole the notes, but
I
can’t put a description in of the man I want: name of Chol-mon-deley, profession double-crosser, fat, wears an emerald ring …’

‘Why,’ she said, ‘I believe I travelled down with a man like that. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have the nerve …’

‘Oh, he’s only the agent,’ Raven said, ‘but if I could find him I’d squeeze the names …’

‘Why don’t you give yourself up? Tell the police what happened?’

‘That’s a great idea, that is. Tell them it was Cholmondeley’s friends got the old Czech killed. You’re a bright girl.’

‘The old Czech?’ she exclaimed. A little more light came into the kitchen as the fog lifted over the housing estate, the wounded fields. She said, ‘You don’t mean what the papers are so full of?’

‘That’s it,’ he said with gloomy pride.

‘You know the man who shot him?’

‘As well as myself.’

‘And Cholmondeley’s mixed up in it … Doesn’t that mean – that everyone’s all wrong?’

‘They don’t know a thing about it, these papers. They can’t give credit where credit’s due.’

‘And you know and Cholmondeley. Then there won’t be a war at all if you find Cholmondeley.’

‘I don’t care a damn whether there’s a war or not. I only want to know who it is who double-crossed me. I want to get even,’ he explained, looking up at her across the floor, with his hand over his mouth, hiding his lip, noticing that she was young and flushed and lovely with no more personal interest than a mangy wolf will show from the cage in the groomed well-fed bitch beyond the bars. ‘A war won’t do people any harm,’ he said. ‘It’ll show them what’s what, it’ll give them a taste of their own medicine. I know. There’s always been a war for me.’ He touched the automatic. ‘All that worries me is what to do with you to keep you quiet for twenty-four hours.’

She said under her breath, ‘You wouldn’t kill me, would you?’

‘If it’s the only way,’ he said. ‘Let me think a bit.’

‘But I’d be on your side,’ she implored him, looking this way and that for anything to throw, for a chance of safety.

‘Nobody’s on my side,’ Raven said. ‘I’ve learned that. Even a crook doctor … You see – I’m ugly. I don’t pretend to be one of your handsome fellows. But I’m educated. I’ve thought things out.’ He said quickly, ‘I’m wasting time. I ought to get started.’

‘What are you going to do?’ she asked, scrambling to her feet.

‘Oh,’ he said in a tone of disappointment, ‘you are scared again. You were fine when you weren’t scared.’ He faced her across the kitchen with the automatic pointed at her breast. He pleaded with her. ‘There’s no need to be scared. This lip – ’

‘I don’t mind your lip,’ she said desperately. You aren’t bad-looking. You ought to have a girl. She’d stop you worrying about that lip.’

He shook his head. ‘You’re talking that way because you are scared. You can’t get round me that way. But it’s hard luck on you, my picking on you. You shouldn’t be so afraid of death. We’ve all got to die. If there’s a war, you’ll die anyway. It’s sudden and quick: it doesn’t hurt,’ he said, remembering the smashed skull of the old man – death was like that: no more difficult than breaking an egg.

She whispered, ‘Are you going to shoot me?’

‘Oh no, no,’ he said, trying to calm her, ‘turn your back and go over to that door. We’ll find a room where I can lock you up for a few hours.’ He fixed his eyes on her back; he wanted to shoot her clean: he didn’t want to hurt her.

She said, ‘You aren’t so bad. We might have been friends if we hadn’t met like this. If this was the stage-door. Do you meet girls at stage-doors?’

‘Me,’ he said, ‘no. They wouldn’t look at me.’

‘You aren’t ugly,’ she said. ‘I’d rather you had that lip than
a
cauliflower ear like all those fellows who think they are tough. The girls go crazy on them when they are in shorts. But they look silly in a dinner jacket.’ Raven thought: if I shoot her here anyone may see her through a window; I’ll shoot her upstairs in the bathroom. He said, ‘Go on. Walk.’

She said, ‘Let me go this afternoon. Please. I’ll lose my job if I’m not at the theatre.’

They came out into the little glossy hall, which smelt of paint. She said, ‘I’ll give you a seat for the show.’

‘Go on,’ he said, ‘up the stairs.’

‘It’s worth seeing. Alfred Bleek as the Widow Twankey.’ There were only three doors on the little landing: one had ground-glass panes. ‘Open the door,’ he said, ‘and go in there.’ He decided that he would shoot her in the back as soon as she was over the threshold; then he would only have to close the door and she would be out of sight. A small aged voice whispered agonizingly in his memory through a closed door. Memories had never troubled him. He didn’t mind death; it was foolish to be scared of death in this bare wintry world. He said hoarsely, ‘Are you happy? I mean, you like your job?’

‘Oh, not the job,’ she said. ‘But the job won’t go on for ever. Don’t you think someone might marry me? I’m hoping.’

He whispered, ‘Go in. Look through that window,’ his finger touching the trigger. She went obediently forward; he brought the automatic up, his hand didn’t tremble, he told himself that she would feel nothing. Death wasn’t a thing she need be scared about. She had taken her handbag from under her arm; he noticed the odd sophisticated shape; a circle of twisted glass on the side and within it chromium initials, A.C.; she was going to make her face up.

A door closed and a voice said, ‘You’ll excuse me bringing you here this early, but I have to be at the office till late …’

‘That’s all right, that’s all right, Mr Graves. Now don’t you call this a snug little house?’

He lowered the pistol as Anne turned. She whispered breathlessly, ‘Come in here quick.’ He obeyed her, he didn’t understand, he was still ready to shoot her if she screamed.

She saw the automatic and said, ‘Put it away. You’ll only get into trouble with that.’

Raven said, ‘Your bags are in the kitchen.’

‘I know. They’ve come in by the front door.’

‘Gas and electric,’ a voice said, ‘laid on. Ten pounds down and you sign along the dotted line and move in the furniture.’

A precise voice which went with pince-nez and a high collar and thin flaxen hair said, ‘Of course, I shall have to think it over.’

‘Come and look upstairs, Mr Graves.’

They could hear them cross the hall and climb the stairs, the agent talking all the time. Raven said, ‘I’ll shoot if you –’

‘Be quiet,’ Anne said. ‘Don’t talk. Listen. Have you those notes? Give me two of them.’ When he hesitated she whispered urgently, ‘We’ve got to take a risk.’ The agent and Mr Graves were in the best bedroom now. ‘Just think of it, Mr Graves,’ the agent was saying, ‘with flowered chintz.’

‘Are the walls sound-proof?’

‘By a special process. Shut the door,’ the door closed and the agent’s voice went thinly, distinctly on, ‘and in the passage you couldn’t hear a thing. These houses were specially made for family men.’

‘And now,’ Mr Graves said, ‘I should like to see the bathroom.’

‘Don’t move,’ Raven threatened her.

‘Oh, put it away,’ Anne said, ‘and be yourself.’ She closed the bathroom door behind her and walked to the door of the bedroom. It opened and the agent said with the immediate gallantry of a man known in all the Nottwich bars, ‘Well, well, what have we here?’

‘I was passing,’ Anne said, ‘and saw the door open. I’d been meaning to come and see you, but I didn’t think you’d be up this early.’

‘Always on the spot for a young lady,’ the agent said.

‘I want to buy this house.’

‘Now look here,’ Mr Graves said, a young-old man in a black suit who carried about with him in his pale face and irascible air the idea of babies in small sour rooms, of in-
sufficient
sleep. ‘You can’t do that. I’m looking over this house.’

‘My husband sent me here to buy it.’

‘I’m here first.’

‘Have you bought it?’

‘I’ve got to look it over first, haven’t I?’

‘Here,’ Anne said, showing two five-pound notes. ‘Now all I have to do …’

‘Is sign along the dotted line,’ the agent said.

‘Give me time,’ Mr Graves said. ‘I like this house.’ He went to the window. ‘I like the view.’ His pale face stared out at the damaged fields stretching under the fading fog to where the slag-heaps rose along the horizon. ‘It’s quiet country,’ Mr Graves said. ‘It’ll be good for the children and the wife.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Anne said, ‘but you see I’m ready to pay and sign.’

‘References?’ the agent said.

‘I’ll bring them this afternoon.’

‘Let me show you another house, Mr Graves.’ The agent belched slightly and apologized. ‘I’m not used to business before breakfast.’

‘No,’ Mr Graves said, ‘if I can’t have this I won’t have any.’ Pallid and aggrieved he planted himself in the best bedroom of ‘Sleepy Nuik’ and presented his challenge to fate, a challenge which he knew from long and bitter experience was always accepted.

‘Well,’ the agent said, ‘you can’t have this. First come, first served.’

Mr Graves said, ‘Good morning,’ carried his pitiful, narrow-chested pride downstairs; at least he could claim that, if he had been always too late for what he really wanted, he had never accepted substitutes.

‘I’ll come with you to the office,’ Anne said, ‘straight away,’ taking the agent’s arm, turning her back on the bathroom where the dark pinched man stood waiting with his pistol, going downstairs into the cold overcast day which smelt to her as sweet as summer because she was safe again.

4

‘What did Aladdin say

When he came to Pekin?’

Obediently the long shuffling row of them repeated with tired vivacity, bending forward, clapping their knees, ‘
Chin Chin
.’ They had been rehearsing for five hours.

‘It won’t do. It hasn’t got any sparkle. Start again, please.’

‘What did Aladdin say …’

‘How many of you have they killed so far?’ Anne said under her breath. ‘
Chin Chin
.’

‘Oh, half a dozen.’

‘I’m glad I got in at the last minute. A fortnight of this! No thank you.’

‘Can’t you put some Art into it?’ the producer implored them. ‘Have some pride. This isn’t just any panto.’

What did Aladdin say …
’

‘You look washed out,’ Anne said.

‘You don’t look too good yourself.’

‘Things happen quick in this place.’

‘Once more, girls, and then we’ll go on to Miss Maydew’s scene.’

‘What did Aladdin say

When he came to Pekin?’

‘You won’t think that when you’ve been here a week.’

Miss Maydew sat sideways in the front row with her feet up on the next stall. She was in tweeds and had a golf-and-grouse-moor air. Her real name was Binns, and her father was Lord Fordhaven. She said in a voice of penetrating gentility to Alfred Bleek, ‘I said I won’t be presented.’

‘Who’s the fellow at the back of the stalls?’ Anne whispered. He was only a shadow to her.

‘I don’t know. Hasn’t been here before. One of the men who put up the money, I expect, waiting to get an eyeful.’ She began to mimic an imaginary man. ‘Won’t you introduce me to the
girls
, Mr Collier? I want to thank them for working so hard to make this panto a success. What about a little dinner, missy?’

‘Stop talking, Ruby, and make it snappy,’ said Mr Collier.

‘What did Aladdin say

When he came to Pekin?’

‘All right. That’ll do.’

‘Please, Mr Collier,’ Ruby said, ‘may I ask you a question?’

‘Now, Miss Maydew, your scene with Mr Bleek. Well, what is it you want to know?’

‘What
did
Aladdin say?’

‘I want discipline,’ Mr Collier said, ‘and I’m going to have discipline.’ He was rather undersized with a fierce eye and straw-coloured hair and a receding chin. He was continually glancing over his shoulder in fear that somebody was getting at him from behind. He wasn’t a good director; his appointment was due to more ‘wheels within wheels’ than you could count. Somebody owed money to somebody else who had a nephew … but Mr Collier was not the nephew: the chain of causes went much further before you reached Mr Collier. Somewhere it included Miss Maydew, but the chain was so long you couldn’t follow it. You got a confused idea that Mr Collier must owe his position to merit. Miss Maydew didn’t claim that for herself. She was always writing little articles in the cheap women’s papers on: ‘Hard Work the only Key to Success on the Stage.’ She lit a new cigarette and said, ‘Are you talking to
me
?’ She said to Alfred Bleek, who was in a dinner-jacket with a red knitted shawl round his shoulders, ‘It was to get away from all that … royal garden parties.’

Mr Collier said, ‘Nobody’s going to leave this theatre.’ He looked nervously over his shoulder at the stout gentleman emerging into the light from the back of the stalls, one of the innumerable ‘wheels within wheels’ that had spun Mr Collier into Nottwich, into this exposed position at the front of the stage, into this fear that nobody would obey him.

‘Won’t you introduce me to the girls, Mr Collier?’ the
stout
gentleman said. ‘If you are finishing. I don’t want to interrupt.’

‘Of course,’ Mr Collier said. He said, ‘Girls, this is Mr Davenant, one of our chief backers.’

‘Davis, not Davenant,’ the fat man said. ‘I bought out Davenant.’ He waved his hand; the emerald ring on his little finger flashed and caught Anne’s eye. He said, ‘I want to have the pleasure of taking every one of you girls out to dinner while this show lasts. Just to tell you how I appreciate the way you are working to make the panto a success. Whom shall I begin with?’ He had an air of desperate jollity. He was like a man who suddenly finds he has nothing to think about and somehow must fill the vacuum.