John Brown's Body (4 page)

“You’re sitting on my gloves,” said a girl.

Ralph stood up, there was nothing on his chair.

“You don’t mind me asking? I was keeping that seat for a friend.”

“I beg your pardon –”

“Sit down till he comes,
if
he comes. I don’t feel comfortable with an empty place beside me.”

Ralph sat down reluctantly. The girl wore dark glasses which he found intimidating.

“You have to be careful who you speak to. I wouldn’t have come if I’d known I’d be sitting here alone. I’m hypersensitive and it’s an ordeal. ‘Half-past eight in the Pilot, I’m dying to see you,’ he said. I think he’s died and been buried.” She covered Ralph with her shiny round knees like a couple of guns. “It cost me something to go and ask for this little gin for myself. People make it very clear what they think of a woman on her own in a bar. As soon as you step over the threshold of a licensed premises they let their thoughts go. I feel like asking is the licence to slander as well as to drink.”

Ralph was surprised. Didn’t the modern girl like to be thought liberal?

“This place is a jungle. Do you see that tiger over there? He’s been eating me up with his eyes ever since I came in.”

Of course the man with bent ears was looking at her, Ralph could see that now. The gesture with the thumb had been invitation, not greeting.

“He thinks I’m with you, he’d try to make a kill if he knew I wasn’t.”

I’m not being watched, thought Ralph, I just get in the way every time anyone looks at anyone else. That’s Krassner’s doing.

“Have you a cigarette?”

Ralph hadn’t. He preferred to smoke a pipe when at leisure.

“Isn’t it silly? Even that barmaid scares me. I see what she’s thinking, honestly, it flays me when people think like that.”

“I haven’t any cigarettes –”

“God, how that man stares! Hasn’t he seen a woman before?” She pushed her dark glasses up on her forehead. “There, he’ll know me next time.”

It seemed imprudent for one with such a terribly thin skin – and such a bare face.

“I don’t think he means any harm,” said Ralph.

“That depends what you call harm. The barmaid gave me a dirty deep look and not because I’m ambidextrous. She thinks I’m here with my flag up.”

Ralph felt that he was being taught, it was being demonstrated to him that the most things only happen in the mind. He should remember, it should always be a consideration with him.

“I can’t go and ask her for another drink. You know that? I just can’t!”

“Inez is a very nice girl.” Ralph said earnestly, “She wouldn’t harbour such thoughts. I’ve heard her rebuke people for loose talk.”

“Then there’s that tiger waiting for me to go and get myself a drink. When I do – crung!” She pounced with her hand. “He’ll be on to me.”

“As a matter of fact, I thought it was me he was watching.
It shows how wrong you can be about where people are looking and what they’re looking at. Resting your eye is another thing. We all do occasionally when we’re thinking about something entirely different –”

“Oh stuff it!” the girl said loudly. She got up on her fierce black Dr Zhivago boots and went to the ladies’ room.

Ralph gazed into the bowl of his pipe. He wondered why she had ended up like that. After all, she had begun it, so why the rage? Why with him?

She wouldn’t have told Krassner to stuff it. Krassner would have handled her as he handled all women – successfully. But when did handling begin? How soon? Or was it a built-in mechanism that worked on sight?

Krassner would have brought her a drink as if he were bringing light into darkness. Ralph had been about to do that, to get her a drink, but she hadn’t given him the chance.

He
was
being watched. The man across the bar propped his neck on his hand and lazily considered him.

Marise had a visitor while Tomelty was away – her Uncle Fred Macey. He was not actually her uncle but her mother’s cousin and unattached, except loosely to Marise. He did not like Tomelty and Tomelty had no time for him, but on Marise’s side of the family it was agreed that Uncle Fred was attached to her. They said, according to their natures, that he had a soft spot for her, that he had his eye on her, that he made a fool of himself.

They were wrong. One of his life’s preoccupations had been taking care that he was not made a fool of, he certainly wouldn’t allow it to happen by his own doing. Uncle Fred knew just how far he could safely go with Marise. It was really no distance and he had gone all of it. From time to time he dropped in on her to check the limits he had set and establish his position within them.

He was not communicative and ordinarily Marise hardly noticed, she had enough to say for them both. Nor did it bother her what he might be thinking, she thought for both of them. But when she wanted information, as she did now, and came slap against his rooted objection to words, she could have screamed. She did in fact go and scream at half-cock in the kitchen and Uncle Fred remarked that the water pipes were noisy.

“I know I shan’t like it here,” Marise had said, “it’s all so used. We had everything new at Plummer’s, we were the first to live there. We’re about the hundred and first here, I should think the thousand and first. It’s Georgian, Jack says.”

“Never. It’s Victorian.”

Marise was perching on the edge of the couch. She didn’t like its grubby patina nor its jungle smell. It disgusted her to see Tomelty spread out on it, and now Uncle Fred.

“This place has graciousness, that’s what you can smell. Jack says it takes fifty years to come. I haven’t felt clean
since I got here.” Her skin twitched delicately like a cat’s fur. “There are some queer people here. The woman upstairs wears two hats, one on top of the other.” It was a new experience for Marise to see challenge in Uncle Fred, she found it tiresome more than exhilarating. “And there’s someone who calls himself Shilling – there’s nothing to stop him doing that, I suppose. I should think anyone with his name, his real name, and there must have been a lot of them, got rid of it quick.”

“What name?”

“John Brown.”

Uncle Fred didn’t so much sigh as refute. Dissidence erupted from under his waistcoat and the band of his trousers, dissidence and disassociation. He got everything off his chest in one gust.

“You should know,” said Marise, “being a policeman. Don’t pretend you’ve forgotten, you never forget anything. You could go on the stage with your memory, Jack says with your memory and his nerve he’d be rich.” Actually Uncle Fred’s memory was not special, except after a few brown ales when he could be relied on to tell about his days in the B.E.F. But Marise still had to find out how far flattery would get her with him.

“I was a special constable.”

“That’s what I mean, you know all about it. All the things we couldn’t know. They don’t let everything out at trials, they keep it on the police records. But you don’t need to look at records –” Marise drew her finger across the crown of his balding head – “everything’s in here. Jack wouldn’t tell me, he pretended it was too awful. The truth is, he doesn’t really know.”

“I did patrol duty.”

“That’s not all you did. You had to go to court, you had to guard prisoners – did you guard
him
?”

“Knowing’s one thing, telling’s another.”

“But you ought to tell me! I might be in danger. How would you feel if it all happened again – to me?”

Uncle Fred took a biscuit and crunched on it.

“I’m so alone in this great empty house. At night when Jack’s away I feel frightened, I die of fright, not knowing for sure. He looks like a murderer, he’s got a murderer’s face.”

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs. What he did, it was awful, wasn’t it?”

Uncle Fred stood up, ham-fisted. “Show him to me.”

“I can’t, he’s not here now, he’s out at this minute.”

Uncle Fred sat down again. He picked up his empty plate and turned it over and looked at the underneath. He had his code of manners, he never asked for more and he always indicated that he had finished by shoving his plate into the middle of the table.

Marise cut him a slice of raspberry tart. “You’ve seen so much blood I suppose it wouldn’t worry you to see mine.”

Uncle Fred bit the slice of tart and red jam leaked over his chin. “I haven’t set eyes on this geezer.”

“He comes in at half-past six. Always the same time, you’ll be able to see him from this window.”

So it was that Ralph, coming home with conscience well saddled, was unaware of eyes watching from behind the curtains. The thought did occur as he went towards the house that he had compounded a felony and was now on the wrong side of the law. He felt a sense of insecurity, as if he had forfeited all civic and moral rights. He was ready to find that he not only had to empty his own dustbin but that it would not be an offence to run him over, there being no more legal objection to it than to running over a cat. Being a criminal made everyone else law-abiding and he was ready to find that he looked as different as chalk from cheese and that everyone could see why. He did not allow for the extenuating circumstance, the best he had acted for – not, anyway, at the moment of going into the house where was all the best for him.

Being here and not at Thorne Farm was sustained rebellion, a mighty piece of self-indulgence. He could have lived
at the Farm, as Bertha wanted him to, and worked in Chelmsford, if not equally well, well enough. But he had insisted on living here from Monday to Friday, it was essential to him, he was like a man with an air-hole, he had to have it and he hadn’t really tried to justify it. Now he had compounded a felony to keep things the way they were. This way, he thought as he stood at the door of his flat, this admirable way.

People like Krassner would ask what was admirable about it. He heard Krassner say, “Is this what you want, old boy? Is this what you call living?”

The cat was crouched on the window-sill, elbows out, a lozenge of black in each golden eye. Ralph dropped his hat and briefcase and lit a cigarette. So far as he was concerned this was living and perhaps was comic. Perhaps because he needed to do less than most people and not nearly as much as Krassner to live, it was pathetic. It was nonetheless a precious state of affairs.

He kicked on the gas-fire, lit it, and in his overcoat sat down. It would be hard to justify his liking for this – all right then – this existence. He had few material comforts here and no company. At Thorne he could have both, and more money left in his pocket. But there had never been a question in his mind as to what he wanted, he knew before he knew what he was missing that he could not let himself miss it.

Bertha asked, “What do you do with yourself?” She sounded wistful and he had to be careful what he said. They all lived on the edge if not of a volcano, of a trapdoor. He invariably answered, “I read, listen to the News, take a walk to the local, go to bed early”. Which was true as far as it went, but Bertha used to look at him – and so did Emmeline – as if to say, “Is there nothing else?”

He drew hard on his cigarette and in the dark the lighted end pulsed, the cigarette grew visibly shorter and he took it from between his lips and held it in his fingers. Bertha and Emmeline would never appreciate that what he did only
carried what he did not do – expediently, as a cable carries a current. Yes, there was something else which had to be nameless and which he admitted might be the reason for what he had just done. He had just withdrawn two hundred pounds, his wife’s two hundred, and paid it into the firm’s account. And he had about two hours, the time it would take him to get to Thorne, to think of a reason to give her.

She was going to ask questions, one or two a day, for the rest of their lives. She simply did not have enough to think about. He would do better to have an attitude rather than answers. But what attitude?

She would have to trust him – poor woman, she would have to. He could guess how difficult that would be made for her in his absence. She might promise him not to tell Emmeline and might not want to tell her, but she would have to tell someone. There was only Emmeline, there was always Emmeline, he was as good as married to the two of them.

Bertha would maintain, “Ralph has made the decision, it was right that he should” and Emmeline would say, “He is stubborn, that’s not the same thing as strength of character,” and each time he went to Thorne he would have to repair the erosions. He would have to do that for Bertha’s sake, because doubt in any form made her unhappy. Luckily it was easy to reassure her, it only required his presence. She subsided into that sometimes as if it were a warm bath, at other times she stood up in it as if it were a tin suit and no-one could harm her through it. To make her really happy, to implement her against Emmeline and other sources of misgiving, he should stay with her. Those were the two sides of the coin, her happiness and his.

Ralph washed up his tea-things and the cat’s dish. He had a small ’fridge and looked inside to check his needs. It did not escape him that he was already looking forward to Monday evening when Thorne would be miles away: it did not escape him, it annoyed him. Was there no justice in him?
No humanity? It surely was inhuman to want to discount all the caring shown him at Thorne.

Into his briefcase he put the day’s
Telegraph
and his rolled mackintosh. He put on a corduroy cap which he wore at weekends at Thorne. “Shoo!” he said to the cat in farewell.

In the hall he met Marise who had been to the gate to wave goodbye to Uncle Fred. It was a surprise to both of them, although she had had Ralph in mind. In fact, coming face to face with him on this particular evening was little short of a bombshell. Uncle Fred had disappointed and aggravated her by his attitude. After one glance at Mr Shilling through the window he had stated positively that he was not John Brown.

“I do know your name,” she said, “I haven’t really forgotten. It’s a short one, like Smith or Jones or Green. Isn’t it a colour, isn’t it White?”

She was wishing that Jack and Uncle Fred could see his face. He was thunderstruck, she told Tomelty later.

She didn’t exaggerate, she did have a striking effect on Ralph. She had been far from his thoughts and suddenly seeing her was like having a light brandished in his face. There was more to her than light, there was a flesh-and-bloodedness of purity, such purity, he thought, that it could come second only to cellulose.

Yes, he thought, she had the total absence of congenital harm that fresh flowers had. When he looked at fresh flowers and now that he looked at her he saw no badness to break out or soak through or twist awry.

“My name is Shilling.”

“I ought to remember because your other name’s the same as my husband’s but everyone calls him ‘Jack’.”

“My name’s Ralph.”

Uncle Fred had told Marise, “That’s not him,” and when she asked why not, he got angry, and so did she. Knowing how long it normally took him to make up his mind about anything she was sure he had made it up in advance so as to know better than Jack.

“I suppose I didn’t recognise you because I haven’t seen you wearing a cap before.”

Ralph would have liked to touch her, he often touched flowers, trying to identify their purity and he had a strong temptation to follow the curve of her neck with his finger.

“I’ve only spoken to you once,” she said, “but I watch you coming and going.”

Uncle Fred had shouted – when he was angry he said nothing at the top of his voice – “He didn’t wear a bowler!” So now she was sure and she felt reckless and dangerous to herself.

“I watch you every day.”

“Do you?” Ralph said wonderingly. He was full of amazement. The encounter seemed no less than a miracle and could not last at the present pace. It was gathering momentum all the time. Already he had gone too far ever to get back to the same place. “Do you? Why?”

“My husband makes me. He makes me watch everybody, he says I think I’m the only one alive.”

“Do you?”

“Yes,” said Marise. “Except for you, I think you’re alive.”

“Indeed I am. It must be the first time,” said Ralph, and Marise, who had been going to remark, “But you shouldn’t be, should you?” gave him a stare of appraisal instead.

Ralph flushed. He hardly knew what he was saying, and yet it mattered acutely. “There
is
only the one time, isn’t there?” He added, with pleading out of all context, “As far as we know?”

The situation had moved a little out of Marise’s hands but she saw the lovely way it could go. She saw idyllic fear and herself in possession of a monster and was ready at once – she always presumed on the moment, and seeing what might be as good as being, she was often right ahead of time and it was one of the things that upset Tomelty.

“Come in and have a cup of tea,” she said to Ralph.

He looked at her in anguish. “I can’t, I have to catch a train.”

*

He got out of the train still smarting at his inadequacy. How long was it since a miracle had happened to him? And he had said, “I can’t”. Was ever a man so dead? He felt deprived and by his own act and when he saw Bertha waiting in the car he heard the old cogs turning. He knew their creaks, he had let himself be lulled by their creaks, he passed his week-ends in a lull.

Not this week-end, he thought, and remembered that he hadn’t decided what to say to Bertha. Instead of using the journey to reach an attitude, he had sat in a daze. The new little creature had gone to his head. Only his feet remained resolute. They had carted him to the station and hoisted him aboard the train, they were the reason, the sole reason, he thought without humour, why he was here.

“There you are, dear,” said Bertha. She always said it with a hint of shyness. She could still be shy with him. “I’m so thankful you’ve arrived safely.” She had a debt of gratitude and paid it. Each time Ralph came she did not thank God or Fate for his arrival, she thanked him for coming – to be sheltered and served and surrendered to. “I fancy the train’s a little late?”