John Brown's Body (3 page)

Ralph chewed steadily at his chop. If a spot of gravy on a ledger was lack of principle, what was a deficit of two hundred pounds? It was dishonesty, he had to admit, to the most impartial assessor: to Pecry, the fanatic, it would be a capital crime. Pecry could invoke the law and for two hundred
pounds he would invoke the Public Prosecutor and the Lord Chief Justice and probably M.I.5 as well.

Ralph had no fear for Krassner, whatever happened Krassner would end on top, certainly on top of the Board. He was made to best everyone without being definably better himself. Krassner would not suffer more than a temporary inconvenience, but Ralph would. He pushed his plate away and fetched a sheet of paper from the bureau. This he ruled into two columns. On the left he wrote ‘Telling’: on the right, ‘Not Telling’, and underneath each he put a subheading: ‘Losses’.

At that point it occurred to him to wonder what it was all about. Was Krassner involved with a woman? How could she cost him two hundred pounds? What was he getting for that? Ralph decided that he had a right to know, he had every right to know since he would be the loser. He wrote “reputation” on the left and then scored it through and wrote ‘standing’.

But men like Krassner did not need to pay for their women. Ralph had seen him in action. Charm was an extra dimension which took the woman right out of herself and made her at once mistress and slave and adept at a game they two would each win. On that occasion Krassner hadn’t even paid for her drinks.

Ralph wrote ‘catalogue’ in the ‘Telling’ column. He was responsible for compiling the yearly brochure of the firm’s products for circulation at home and overseas. The job carried a certain cachet and was coveted by senior members of the staff. But after one of Pecry’s showdowns there was invariably a stripping of marks of distinction or favour. It was three years since the gravy incident and Jeffney had still not been reissued with his rubber name stamp which Pecry had withdrawn at the time. The catalogue would certainly be taken from Ralph.

Krassner made no secret of the fact that he lost, and won, on the horses. But never large sums – “No four-legged brute’s going to skin me.” Ralph couldn’t picture him playing
cards, he had too restless an eye, nor roulette – he couldn’t endure to stand and wait while fate was settled for him. certainly not by a ball and a wheel. There were other forms of gambling which required active participation – legitimate business, for instance. Krassner’s debts could be honest though his method of meeting them wasn’t.

‘Peace of mind’, wrote Ralph, large across both columns because he had already lost it and wouldn’t get it back for a long long time. The necessity of deciding was what Krassner had put on him, the necessity of choosing from two unpleasant sequences of events. Were they equally unpleasant? And, if they were equal now, might they not become wildly unequal later on? For instance, if he did not tell, if he covered up for Krassner and the whole thing came out, he would stand convicted of aiding and abetting.

If he told Pecry, if tomorrow he went to Pecry’s office: “I have just discovered, it has come to my notice, I was checking the receipt stubs, I check them regularly, yes, I’m responsible for the accounts, personally responsible, yes, no I have never delegated nor trusted – a deficit of two hundred pounds has existed for three months – yes, three months – I didn’t notice, I must have overlooked, I’m unable to account for it –” that would be item one. Pecry would sack Krassner and probably prosecute him but Krassner would amount to little more than nine days’ wonder. For Ralph there would be a process of attrition, an infinitely graduated disciplinary action.

Under ‘Telling’ Ralph wrote ‘job’. He would certainly be demoted, publicly or circuitously, whichever gave Pecry most scope. It turned him cold to think what a razor edge he was on, had unknowingly been on ever since the money became missing. Krassner’s bonus would take time to put through and there was a further hazard which money ran with Krassner: it never kept its shape. Ralph had noticed that although Krassner rarely had money in his pocket he always had much more than the market value of it in himself. Thirty pounds a week couldn’t have bought him ambience
– five thousand a year couldn’t buy it for Pecry – but Krassner had it. What a pity ambience wasn’t negotiable, could put people in its debt but couldn’t repay.

Ralph wrote ‘two hundred pounds’ in the ‘Not Telling’ column. It was a solid figure and helpful among so many abstractions, though it had to be written as a solid loss. He saw small chance of intercepting Krassner’s bonus cheque before it was folded irretrievably into Krassner’s hand. Yet if he, Ralph, was to get off the razor’s edge the money must be paid in at once. He, Ralph, must pay it, but not out of his own banking account because it was his and Bertha’s jointly.

Thus was Bertha brought into both columns. If ‘Telling’ meant telling her as well as Pecry, ‘Not Telling’ would mean not telling her the truth. Obviously she would have to be told something, most of the money in their account was hers, residue of a legacy from her father, and Ralph would require a valid excuse for withdrawing two hundred pounds. Bertha wasn’t mean, she was analytical – it came of having so much time on her hands.

“I’m not mad,” Ralph told the cat, “but the circumstances are. The circumstances are mad as March hares.”

He decided to go out for a while, he needed to hear voices outside his head. Already Bertha’s voice was saying, “You know best, dear, but is it an act of friendship to lend anyone that amount of money? And who is there to lend it to?” She knew that there was no-one, he was not involved in friendship to that degree. His own voice said, “You’ll have to trust me.” Why should she? She wouldn’t benefit. The best that could happen to her, the very best, would be that she would be no worse off – if Krassner repaid the money and Pecry did not find out and Ralph was not demoted. She would have to subsidise her husband because if she didn’t he was liable to a cut in salary and that would be the worse for both of them.

As he went downstairs Ralph realised, too late, that
Madame Belmondo was on the watch. She came clattering out in her wooden exercise sandals. “Mr Shilling.”

“Good evening, Madame.” Hers was not a voice he wanted to hear. He tried to raise his hat which he was not wearing and the gesture became a fumble.

“Mr Shilling, I must talk to you about that cat.”

“The cat’s fine, it’s had its supper.”

“I know you look after it, you’re kindness itself. But the creature’s savage, it’s savaged me.” She held out her grubby little white hand. Across the fingers was a long coral coloured scratch.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re not to blame. Neither am I. It was looking in at my window and I didn’t like the way it was looking. I tapped on the glass and it wouldn’t go so I pulled down the upper half and told it ‘Shoo!’ and waved my hand out and that’s when it scratched me.”

“It knows some words,” said Ralph. “It’s pretty intelligent.”

“My dear, I wouldn’t hurt it! I know how you value it. But this isn’t the first time it’s stared in at me in that malevolent way.”

“It springs from sill to sill. Quite a feat when you think of the overhang.”

“You’re so trusting. Windows open night and day. Of course it’s company for you.” There was a tiny wickerwork sound, Madame Belmondo was dimpling. “A man needs more than a cat.”

“I’m sorry it scratched you,” said Ralph. “What can I do about it? Shall I pull its claws out?”

She shuddered. “I think you should be very careful,” and suddenly coming close and reaching up on her toes said in a great whisper, “Have you seen the new people?”

“I saw the girl.” Ralph’s nostrils twitched. If anyone smelt professional, this woman did, with an almost plangent perfume.

“A girl is it?” She found and lightly squeezed his wrist. “And her husband, what is he?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t see him. She’s pretty,” said Ralph. It was not the word he wanted, although of course she was. She was pretty as well as, but whatever else she was was the more important. The impressions she had left were oddly assorted. Pooled, he thought they might add up to someone outside his range and was surprised at the degree of thought he had given such a brief encounter. “She’s very pretty,” he said.

“I expect her husband’s a strong young boy.”

Ralph couldn’t be sure whether Madame Belmondo’s evident satisfaction in that was on his account or because of something she saw in it for herself.

*

In the bar of the Pilot a few people looked round and one man nodded to him. The walls were lined with mirrors, man after man lifted his chin and nodded. Ralph sometimes amused himself trying to calculate the maximum and absolute number of times any reflection could recur. There were eight mirrors in all, of varying sizes, so it was a nice exercise, though not as alarming as it might have been because the root equations had to be hypothetical, he couldn’t very well ask to measure the actual areas of glass. He would have liked a hard answer which he might have flashed around – ‘There’s a mathematical limit to the number of times one object can be reflected. I calculate it –’ if someone had brought up the subject. And why shouldn’t someone? Everything was talked about here sooner or later. “You don’t say! Is that a fact? This is something we all should know.” But a hypothesis wasn’t enough, men in bars were not dazzled by mathematical hypotheses. ‘If’ would stick in their throats, ‘assuming that’ would be cold gristle.

The barmaid wished him good evening as she served him but when he remarked that it had been a nice day she smiled with personal bitterness and did not reply. In the mirror
Ralph saw that among all the moving mouths his own grinned in isolation.

The Pilot was a noisy place. It was patronised by a restless crowd – though not restless enough to get up and go. The crowd did no more, on the face of it, than raise its voices and shuffle its feet. An impression of vigour and alertness could be given by controlled fidgetting. Ralph had observed, not without envy, that the right degree of dash and disregard could carry off foot-wagging and hand-flapping, tic, lip-licking and open scratching of the crotch. Add a loud voice and a willing laugh and the general impression was of a live-wire, a comer. There were a great many comers at the Pilot in the evenings, which was what drew Ralph to it. He liked life – as a spectator, Bertha said. Bertha had given it thought.

He sat down and crossed his legs, carefully avoiding the hem of a coat which a woman had slung over the back of her chair. On the table his glass stood in a slop of someone’s beer. He shifted it to a beer-mat, rubbed it gently back and forth to dry the bottom. The barmaid was watching him. She had a moment to spare, incredibly no-one wanted serving, she leaned her elbows on the bar and watched Ralph.

It would be pleasant if he could think that she was interested. He did not think so, he thought that she was tired and that as she leaned on the bar he happened to be in her line of vision. If the old woman in the flower hat had been sitting where he was, the barmaid would have looked at her.

Ralph shifted his chair to one side to prove it and at that moment someone called the girl away to serve. He was a bit mad to be thinking like this at this juncture. Was he seeking a diversion or another complication? Hoping, perhaps, that two wrongs would make a right?

He raised his glass. It might profit him to reflect how much he would have to give up. He was a prudent man, but a prudent man still finds it expensive to run two homes, especially when one is not wholly his. Any question of reversal and his flat would be the first to go. It would be cheaper
to pay the inflated fares from and to Thorne each day than to keep a separate establishment. That meant, literally, no place of his own. Thorne Farm was Emmeline’s – how it was Emmeline’s!

“I want you to look on it as your home,” her voice said in his head. She wanted to have her cake and eat it, he and Bertha paid for their share of everything, they paid for more than their share because the only privacy they had was their bedroom. So far as he was concerned Emmeline ate her cake but did not have it. He went to Thorne on visiting terms.

There were useful voices at the Pilot, they scrambled the voices in his head – he had a dutiful head, bent on giving others their say.

“The Colonel left Thorne to me, but he wished Bertha to share it.” The Colonel had not known Ralph. The late Colonel was fond of Bertha. And the Colonel’s lady was no fool. Thorne took some keeping up and although she had plenty of money Emmeline was not averse to saving it. Expenses shared were expenses halved, last year it had cost Ralph two hundred pounds towards a new roof.

Two hundred, the sum exactly. “These things happen”, he might say to Bertha, “like the roof – you can’t budget for them’. But there could not be another roof.

He went to the bar with his glass. “Make it a double.”

“Aren’t you devoted to this stuff,” said the barmaid unquestioningly.

“It’s an old Navy habit.”

Had she really been interested she would have asked was he in the Royal or Merchant. She looked beyond him, called along the bar, “I’ve only got one pair of hands.”

There was a group which Ralph saw stationed always at the same end. The group fluctuated in size but the composition was stable: the members of it were steak-eaters who knew their way about, had beaten out their ways whenever the line of least resistance was not also the most profitable. They could be thought of as a crux, the Pilot’s tone – perhaps
it amounted only to timbre – came not from the brewers or the publican or the neighbourhood, but from these men at the bar. Ralph had watched them putting up topics and shooting them down, putting each other up and blowing each other to blazes. They were privileged people, for them wheels turned and switches were thrown.

When one of them finished a joke they roared all together and fell ritually apart with laughter. The place brimmed with noise, it was a change from the voices in Ralph’s head.

From the far side of the room someone appeared to be contemplating him. A stranger with his overcoat hung open, his hat pushed back and bending the fleshy rims of his ears, raised his thumb in greeting. Or had Ralph imagined it?