John Brown's Body (6 page)

The answers seemed to be lying about in his head, any number of lies lay about ready to be told. And it was easy to deceive Bertha, she didn’t ask for the fiction whole and tongued and grooved and caulked to hold water, she was satisfied with snippets of lies and took each one away and stored it in her mind and came back for another.

But he heard her voice bringing them all out again one by one, and if from him they had sounded like truth, coming from her they sounded like lies. He had to rely on her not telling them to anyone, he had asked her not to, but he was
going to get his own back for years because she would not forget it. He cursed Krassner, Krassner need never lift another finger, he was already built into their lives.

“Do they give you certificates like they do when you buy premium bonds?”

“Why?”

“It’s nice to have something to show even if you’re not sure how much it’s going to be worth.”

“I can’t show you, I haven’t got them with me.”

“They wouldn’t mean anything to me, dear.” They were changing for dinner and she was putting powder into her neck, excitement had made her neck pink. “I can’t read small print. Oh, is that a car in the lane? I must put some Parmesan on the table in case they take it with soup.”

The Chinns were important people, they moved in unmysterious ways through local politics. They had unshakeable faith: if it did not move mountains it shifted many molehills.

“What’s the matter, Shilling? You look as if you’ve lost a fiver and found yourself.”

Dr Chinn did not smile at his own jokes but he expected others to, and faced with his strong wolfish stare they usually did. At public meetings he could stare titters out of an audience of several hundred. Ralph had himself tried the stare before a mirror but he had not enough white to his eyes to make it daunting.

“Ralph’s in a mood,” said Emmeline, “we’re hoping you’ll shake him out of it.”

“He’s a little tired,” said Bertha. “He has such a busy week, so much to think about and do, it can’t be any wonder if he likes to be quiet.”

“I daresay I can match him,” said Dr Chinn. “I’ve seen a hundred or more patients this week, delivered a baby, driven to Colchester for a consultation, written an article on Zygotes and Eggs, inspected the effluents at Bull Marsh and Neap and lime-washed a hen house.”

“The pace is so different in London,” said Bertha. “It’s
so wearing with everyone rushing about. I always start to trot as soon as I get out at Liverpool Street.”

“We’re all rather tired,” said Emmeline, “and I have my own idea why.”

“Indeed?” Mrs Chinn raised her eyebrows. “What is your idea?”

“If I were to state it in present company I should be laughed to scorn. It isn’t nice to be mocked for having the courage of one’s convictions, especially by those one has been obliged to regard as one’s nearest and dearest. But of course I am the only one under that obligation. Shall I pour you a whisky, Dr Chinn?”

“Dear lady, please.” The doctor turned to Ralph. “What have you been up to, Shilling?”

Ralph felt Bertha’s hand touch him for comfort or warning or both.

“Scorn? Mockery? I wouldn’t have thought it commensurate with your nature.” He stared round, hunting up smiles. “What’s that thing of Burns’s about giving us the giftie of seeing ourselves as others see us?”

“We had a slight difference of opinion,” said Bertha. “It happens in the happiest of families and my sister has been under considerable pressure lately. There was no mockery, no-one scorned anyone.”

“A little leg-pulling?” The doctor stooped solicitously to Emmeline. “One cannot always take it from whence it comes. Or if one can, the source may make it harder to take at all.”

“It was a serious discussion,” Bertha said firmly.

Mrs Chinn drained her glass. “What pressure has Mrs Openshaw been under?”

“I may tell you later. It would be a relief. Ralph, do give Mrs Chinn another sherry.”

Ralph hoped she would tell them, he looked forward to hearing the doctor on terrestrial rays and ionization by secret streams. He wanted to ask if anyone had noticed pressure
at Bull Marsh, walking about over the effluent. Shouldn’t that sort of stream be twice as lethal?

During dinner the Chinns talked about themselves. The subject should have been a varied one since their activities were, but they seemed always to follow the formula which brought them out one hundred per cent right. Ralph couldn’t blame them. Had he been able to find such a formula he would have kept on it too. He listened without rancour through the soup, with Parmesan, through the stuffed roast pork and the green salad, the apple and lemon pie, the Bath Olivers and cheese, and blew a silent fanfare right into their faces.

He tried the Krassner incident their way, by their formula. How would it have come out for Dr Chinn? Krassner had said, “I’m glad you’re human, old boy, it’s a weight off my mind. If people are born putty saints how are the rest of us poor bastards going to feel, having to fight temptation all the time? Yes, I’m glad you’re going to put up the money, it shows that temptation’s where you find it.” Krassner had said, “You’ve been tempted to save your office skin, old boy.”

Ralph heard Dr Chinn reply, “You’ve just made your second big mistake, Krassner. The first was to steal, the second is to suppose I would compound a felony.”

Dr Chinn wouldn’t have replaced the money, the formula would have seen him right, the formula would have taken care of everything and taken the blame to the top. To Pecry? That would have made history.

“Ralph! What are you dreaming about?” Emmeline called down the table. “Ralph! Dr Chinn is speaking to you.”

The doctor disliked not being attended to. He leaned across and tapped Ralph’s plate with the side of his knife. “I said it’s not smart to work in London. You should consider your arteries.”

“Ralph takes exercise,” said Bertha. “He walks everywhere.”

“He doesn’t have an expense account,” said Emmeline.

“What could be wrong with his arteries?”

“Nothing, dear lady, provided he remembers that he has them.”

“I think we should look beyond flesh and blood for the causes of our illnesses,” said Emmeline.

“We should, we should!” cried the doctor. “Of all creation our flesh and blood is most qualified to be perfect. Only yesterday, as I held a newly-born child by the heels I said to Nurse, ‘Here’s a brand new creature, a perfect being. What will we make of him? What will he make of himself?’”

Ralph stared. Here was his miracle stated, here was medical authority for it.

“We should look at the infected universe, everything in it is pathogenetic,” said the doctor, fixing them for the joke, and Ralph was wondering with alarm and despondency how many men had seen the perfectability of the flesh as he, Ralph, had seen it. How many had already discovered her in her flower of life?

“We should look at Shilling’s pesticides which preserve the crop and poison the eater,” said Dr Chinn.

“What happens to arteries,” Bertha wanted to know, “to make them harden?”

“They fur up like a kettle,” said Emmeline.

“Dear lady, that’s a whimsical thought. But I’m sure we don’t want to discuss the degenerative changes of animal tissues.”

“I do,” said Bertha. “Will anyone try a pear?”

Ralph felt sad. It was true that in the new-born child Dr Chinn had observed only the theory while Ralph himself had been privileged to see it in its beautiful practice. But the miracle now seemed less of a miracle. I’m being absurd, thought Ralph, if I expect to have a monopoly of truth.

Mrs Chinn turned to Emmeline. “There was something you were going to tell us. About pressure.”

“It’s a family matter.” Bertha stood up. “Shall we go into the garden-room for coffee?”

“It helps to talk about family matters outside the family,” said Mrs Chinn. “Disinvolvement is an asset.”

Ralph stood up beside Bertha. Dr Chinn began to pick up and sniff the pears. He selected two and put one on his wife’s plate. Ralph and Bertha sat down again.

“I’m seriously wondering whether this is a good place to live” said Emmeline.

“Good? In what sense?”

“Whether it’s good for our health.”

“Salubrious? From that point of view I consider it one of the best sites in the district.”

“On the face of it, yes. I’m considering what’s underneath.”

“Dear lady, what is underneath?”

“I mean to find out.”

“How will you do that?”

“I shall employ a water-diviner.”

There was a pause during which Dr Chinn quartered his pear and peeled each piece as if he were removing a membrane.

“I shouldn’t have thought this house was damp,” said Mrs Chinn.

“It isn’t. There’s something much more potent about water than its wetness.” Emmeline crushed her cigarette into the crumbled pastry on her plate. “There are radiations. They operate with or against, and here at Thorne they are against us.”

“But only in this part of the house. And of course Emmy feels it,” said Bertha, “because she sleeps in the room over this one.”

“Feels what?”

“I can only describe it as a pull in the wrong direction.” Emmeline signalled to Ralph and he fetched the cigarette box from a side table. “It’s tiring to have to fight little fights all the while.”

“Would it be correct to say that you are having trouble with the plumbing?”

“No.” Emmeline got up and began to stir around the room. Her dress was unfashionably long and of some noisy material which cracked across her knees at every step. “Do you know anything about radiesthesia?”

“I’m familiar with the principle of the copper bracelet.”

“Are you familiar with the principle that everyone, every living creature, every
thing,
has an electro-magnetic field? An area of influence, of radiation? I don’t end here –” Emmeline slapped her cheek and spread her arms wide – “this is also me. And this –” she embraced the air above Dr Chinn’s head – “this is also you. This room is full of radiation, our magnetic fields are here, Mrs Chinn’s and Bertha’s, Ralph’s and this auricula’s – yes, this plant has a magnetic field, so have these chairs and this carpet and curtains and that bit of iron in the chimney-breast.”

It was necessary for Emmeline to be seen doing whatever she was doing. She always pushed herself to an extreme in public, though never to an extremity. “Who shall say where we finish?” She whirled, with crackling skirts, around Dr and Mrs Chinn. “Can you be sure of a place, any place, where there’s none of me, nothing of you?”

Dr Chinn dissected a brown speck from his pear. “There’s nothing of any of us out at Bull Marsh.”

“Time and distance don’t finish us!” cried Emmeline. “Nor does death.”

“We are not in that effluent area,” said Dr Chinn.

“You don’t believe me?”

“Dear lady, I never disbelieve anyone as sincere as you are. Occasionally a doctor has to suspend his critical faculties and recognise the power of unreason.”

“I’m simply looking beyond my nose. Moonshots and space probes are done by mathematics – I shan’t say ‘simple’ mathematics although comparatively speaking they are, because the equations are on the blackboard waiting to be worked out. But there are some things that cannot be written down. Sometimes I think that chimney-breast is to blame.”

“To blame for what?”

“For the way we feel, my sister and I.”

“It looks like an old oven door. An admirable piece of casting.” Mrs Chinn said briskly, “if you’re thinking of removing it I should like to buy it.”

“I’ve not yet discovered what it is you feel.” The doctor looked at Ralph. “We might start from there.”

“Oppressed,” said Emmeline. “We feel oppressed and tired in this room. If I stay here all day, by evening I can scarcely lift a finger.” It was hard to believe. She had flesh as strong and sappy as celery, a limp Emmeline was a contradiction in terms.

“Iron has such polarity with the earth’s core – oh even Ralph would feel iron! But I think these emanations come from water. I feel water under this house.”

“Dear lady, I think indeed you may. Since almost three-quarters of the earth’s surface is covered by water there’s bound to be plenty of it running about underneath. Carrying your principle to its broadest conclusion, what about the British Navy? If radiations from water have a depressive effect, how do our sailors stay on their feet?”

Bertha said, “Oh dear,” under her breath and Mrs Chinn smiled. Ralph thought it was not a fair smile, not fair to Emmeline whose house this was and whose dinner they had eaten.

“Any principle can be reduced to absurdity.” The Chinns were now her enemy. “There’s all the difference between radiations from a concentrated spring and from a body of water like the sea.”

“I’m relieved to hear it.” The doctor fixed them, face by face. “Or how have we contrived to rule the waves?”

“Ralph’s going to bring a water-diviner,” said Bertha, and the doctor’s white eyes rolled round to Ralph. “He has business connections everywhere. Most people wouldn’t know where to look for a water-diviner, would they?”

“Do you feel oppressed, Shilling?”

“He feels as we do,” said Emmeline. “More so.”

“Why more so?”

“It comes harder on him, when he’s been working he needs rest and relaxation here. He’s the breadwinner.”

Dr and Mrs Chinn raised their eyebrows together, though without apparent collusion.

“You mentioned a difference of opinion,” said Mrs Chinn.

“Not between ourselves.”

“And no mockery, dear lady, from your nearest and dearest?”

It was Emmeline’s turn to fix the doctor’s eye. “We feel the same about everything.”

“Why is London bad for Ralph’s arteries?” asked Bertha.

Marise had been doing some history. She did not actually write it down, though one day she would. It was of course her own personal history and was called “Everything being I am” and included times before she was born as times in preparation for her being. The current section began: “This was the darkest hour. She had been torn from the lap of luxury and imprisoned where harlots and murderers lived. It was his plan to crush her spirit, she who had a spirit like a thousand birds.”

Marise had spoken to the harlot and it had been a very significant conversation.

“I knew at once,” she told Tomelty. “She was an open box.”

“You mean book.”

“Why should I mean book?”

Tomelty yawned. He had just come back from Newcastle, sitting in on a poker game. The rattle of the train was still in his head and the warm beer he had drunk all night had given him heartburn.

The flat showed signs of Marise as a picnic spot shows signs of a picnic. When Tomelty walked in he saw a record of what she had been doing. She had knelt on the chairs, pulled the curtains back and leaned her cheek against the window and rubbed a clean patch on the glass, she had eaten a cake and an orange as she wandered about the room and left crumbs on the mantelshelf and peel on the piano. She had tried to play the piano, looking under the lid at the hammers while she struck the keys, the silk runner hung askew and she had taken a glass out of the china cabinet and put a feather in it. A broken string of beads lay on the table, some of the beads on the floor – he trod on one and crushed it. The toy bear was pushed snout down between the cushions of an armchair.

“Is there any bacon, Gyp?”

“It’s only ten o’clock. I haven’t been shopping yet.”

She wore his dressing-gown. She often spent half the day in it, her hands hidden in the sleeves and the skirt like a bell-tent round her. She said once that it comforted her in his absence and once he had believed her. It was soon after they were married, while there were some lies he still wanted to hear and he wasn’t above making some up for her to tell him.

“You could have got it yesterday.”

“Yesterday was Sunday. You could have got breakfast on the train.”

“Couldn’t run to it.” Also in his head was the rattle of the five pounds he had lost at poker to complete strangers. “Take that thing off!” He tore at the scruff of the dressing-gown as she passed him.

It dropped over her shoulders to her waist and slid from there to the floor. She stood naked and for a moment they were utterly surprised. Then they laughed, Tomelty slapped his knee and Marise, looking down at her stomach, laughed the more to see it quake.

“You’re a marvel,” said Tomelty fervently and so she was, standing unashamed, the colour of wheat straw and with the same patina of pale gold where the light touched her. Tomelty felt plain covetousness and put out his hand to take her as he would any rarity.

Marise dodged and still laughing ran into the bathroom. She took the precaution of locking the door while she dressed. When she came out he was making tea.

“Did you have a good trip?”

He grunted, he was sulking and Marise thought how ridiculous he was. If it had been anything else he wanted, was always wanting, she could have taken it seriously. She didn’t wish to be unkind because it was how he had been born, but she could see the funny side, only the funny side.

“Newcastle’s a dirty place.” She had been no farther north than Barnet but she knew what coal sacks smelled like. “Somebody has to do the dirty work and it’s a good thing
they do it up there. Coal sacks smell like kippers.” She poured tea into the cup he had set for himself and sipped from it. “Shall I get you a kipper for your breakfast?”

“One day, Gyp, I’ll do for you. Other women can be left, I can get up and leave them. But not you, you’ll have to be finished. I’ll finish you and the harder you push me the sooner I shall do it.”

She pouted. “I’ve been all by myself all the week-end, no-one to talk to, nothing to do. You know I don’t like being alone on Sundays.”

“I’m not going over that again. This Newcastle client was a hard sell and if I hadn’t been prepared to soften him up, plenty of others would. You may not realise it, but the ones that pay the money call the tune.” He poured himself tea and liberally splashed in whisky. He was lucky, for all the whisky he drank the first mouthful still had power to fire the roof of his head. “That’s better. Who cares about food anyway?”

“I stayed in bed.” It wasn’t true, she disliked the bedroom and had slept all night curled up in a chair. She said it because bed was part of his ridiculousness, and showed him her pointed pink tongue. “I stayed in bed all by myself.”

Tomelty took a mouthful of whisky and hot tea. He grimaced and took another mouthful and grimaced again, but pleasurably. “You’re a bloody marvel.” He was comforted, the whisky, the hot tea, comforted him.

“You know they are harlots and murderers in this house?”

“That’s right.”

“I didn’t speak first, this woman came over to me at the window. ‘You must be our new neighbours,’ she said. ‘And you must be a harlot,’ I thought to myself. I knew by the way she walked.”

“What about her tail? You can always tell them by their tails.”

“She had green powder in her nostrils and nothing on under her dress. I could see everything.”

“Pretty?”

“No, she’s old and fat.” Marise blew out her cheeks and mimicked, ‘My name is Sophie Belmondo and I live in the first floor flat. I know you’ll be happy, we have such nice people here.’”

“This is a nice place.”

“I shan’t be happy. I was happy at Plummer’s, that was the happiest time of my life.”

He looked at her gloomily. “I brought you a present.”

“Oh, what is it?”

He threw her a package. “Put it on, let’s see you.”

It was a mini-skirt apparently made of sharkskin. Marise held it against her, it was scarcely eighteen inches long. “I can’t wear that!”

“Of course you can. You’ve got a nice pair of jinoos so why not show them.”

“You’re trying to corrupt me. And that’s not all. If you get me to expose myself to evil eyes there’ll be evil done and that would save you the trouble, wouldn’t it? You’d like to see me murdered.”

“That’s right,” Tomelty said calmly, “but I shall want the satisfaction of doing it myself.”

Marise was going to try on the mini-skirt. She could have become a model, a man she met on a train had once offered to make her one, ‘a pocket Venus’ he called her. But she did not care for the modern styles, they were too jokey.

She straightened up with the skirt tight across her thighs. “It doesn’t even come to my knees.”

“It’s not meant to. They’ve got kind faces, your knees, kinder than your face. I like to see them smiling.”

“I couldn’t wear it, I’d be frightened.”

“What of?”

“The man upstairs.” She bent her knees and tried to pull the skirt down over them. “If he’s done it twice he can do it three times.”

“Who’s done what?”

“Murder.”

“What murder, for God’s sake?”

“You said he was John Brown, didn’t you? You said John Brown was a murderer.”

“I said he looked like him. John Brown’s pushing up daisies by now.”

“How do you know?”

Tomelty’s nose began to blanch. “He’s dead and buried. I’m telling you – that’s how
you
know.”

Marise stooped to look at her knees. “They don’t smile. But I’m looking at them upside down so I suppose I wouldn’t see it. Uncle Fred said it wasn’t him.”

“Fred Macey? Has he been here?”

“He came to tea. He saw him through the window.” Tomelty was looking at her in the mini-skirt. She recognised how he was looking – he could shout and bully but in the end he could only look. He could only stand a mile off and look. “Shall I draw your eyes on them?” She flexed and relaxed her kneecaps. “And put a moustache on this one and lipstick on the other?”

“I said I didn’t want Fred Macey coming here, I said don’t ask him and don’t let him in if he comes.”

“I didn’t ask him, he came. He likes me.”

“I know what he likes, dirty old goat.”

“He’s not old, only older. I like older people.”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed the way you rub round him.”

“He’s my uncle. I was brought up to be fond of my relations.”

“You’re fond of dirt but you don’t want to get yourself dirty.” Tomelty’s nose turned the colour of a newly-peeled stick, greenish against his unshaven cheeks. “I won’t have him letching after you and I won’t have you playing kitten. If I catch you at it I’ll make you both sorry but I’ll make you sorriest of all.”

“That would be incest.” Marise took Barbra-Bear from the chair. “I never think about that sort of thing but if I did I wouldn’t talk about it. I shouldn’t care for anyone to think I had such thoughts.”

She sat cross-legged on the floor, cradling the toy between her knees. Tomelty looked at her and his face fell as if he were about to cry.

“You don’t have thoughts, Gyp, only spasms.”

Whatever he chose to believe suited Marise. She had taken him partly for his beliefs because they were convenient. So long as he believed that there was nothing for him to share she was saved the trouble of keeping herself to herself.

“Uncle Fred said he isn’t even like John Brown.”

“What does Uncle Fred know about it?”

“He was a special constable.” Marise pulled Barbra-Bear’s skirt up to its armpits and dandled its limp legs at Tomelty. “He could always go to the Rogues’ Gallery and see their photographs.”

“That old goat knows nothing about it. I knew John Brown, I talked to him and I say this one’s the dead ringer of him.” Tomelty took off his jacket and dragged at his tie. “Run away, Gyp, I’m going to get some sleep.”

Marise said, “He’s the live ringer,” as Tomelty was going into the bedroom. She took his ballpoint pen from his jacket pocket and settled down to draw faces on her knees.

*

Ralph had not been having a good week: or, rather, he was not having a standard one. That was to be expected since things had moved out of true.

In the first place he was unable to get Pecry to advance Krassner’s bonus – it was not standard for him to get Pecry to do anything and usually he did not try.

“Service bonuses are calculated on a percentage over a period, between two calendar dates, and fall due and are paid on or after the calendar date of expiry. You know the procedure, Shilling.”

Ralph did know. He knew that if a man had worked for twenty-five years, starting in the afternoon as a teaboy, he
would not receive his bonus until twenty-five years to the calendar day p.m.

“I should like to request that in the circumstances the procedure be waived.”

“What circumstances?”

“He has done good work and I think he should be encouraged.”

“He is paid to do good work.” When Pecry looked at Ralph or when Ralph looked at Pecry, it was possible to believe that Nature had progressed beyond the human condition. “Is he living on his expectations?”

“He doesn’t expect anything,” said Ralph.

“But he has asked for realisation of a sum of money which is not payment but recognition. I should not need to remind you that recognition must have its full term. If Krassner was given his bonus a day in advance he might, between that day and the next, cease to merit it.”

Nature had bypassed the wasteful old method of growth and decay and created Pecry
in
situ
, as he was now and always had been, an archetypal fifty, of something harder than bone and drier than blood.

“A bonus is the price of virtue received, not a bribe for virtue to come. I should like to know where
your
interests lie.”

An infant Pecry could only be possible as a miniature Pecry, believed Ralph, just as the early medieval Christ child was portrayed as a miniature man – it made Pecry not divine so much as daemonic.

“I draw my own conclusions about that, Shilling. Why have you been such a fool?”

Ralph wondered also. If he didn’t actually credit Pecry with second sight, he had to allow that he had a nose for trouble. It had been foolish to raise the subject of Krassner’s bonus.

“I’m thinking of good staff relations.”

“Words, Shilling, words. The jargon of our time. There’s no such thing as staff relations. A man contracts to do a fair
day’s work – in the equitable and worthy sense, not the merely passable sense – for a fair day’s pay. If he does not give satisfaction he gets the sack, if he does not get satisfaction he is free to go elsewhere. That’s all there is to it.” Pecry’s gesture of impatience released a whiff of rubber. “When everyone gets something for nothing the something becomes valueless.”

Ralph had had some foolish idea about asking to be allowed to hand Krassner his cheque privately and without ceremony. “He would prefer it that way,” he had been going to say, and had hoped that Pecry wouldn’t notice that it was right out of Krassner’s character. Now he saw that if he wanted to confirm Pecry’s suspicions he should go ahead and make that request. It would in any case be refused. He could hear Pecry saying, “There will be a formal presentation by the Chairman in the usual way. You need not be present if you think it would fuss you, Shilling.”

He looked Pecry in the eye, trying to look sincere, eager, a little fat-headed, “I’m sorry, but I do believe in staff relations. I’ve watched Krassner and I think the money would mean something really great to him now, whereas in two months’ time it will just be routine. Not that he’s in actual financial need, it’s nothing to do with that.”

“I don’t believe in the bonus system,” said Pecry. “It operates on the assumption that a man is not being paid enough. The Board knows my views.”

“I always thought the bonus was a practical appreciation of good work.”

“Does he owe you money?”

Ralph tried to keep his eyes still by focussing them on a rosy pimple, a delicate fleshy bubble on Pecry’s forehead.

“Certainly not.” But Pecry with his second sight was looking directly at the receipt-stubs and at the gap in sequence which Ralph had by heart and which came back to him like heart-burn. “Why should I lend Krassner money? I don’t know anything about him, he doesn’t confide his personal affairs in me, we’re not on intimate terms.” That was wide
of the point, suspiciously wide to someone like Pecry who did not know what intimate terms were. Ralph smiled with his jaws. “I couldn’t lend Krassner money, I couldn’t lend anyone money. I’d like to see myself lending two hundred pounds, I’d like to see myself able to.” He was careful not to sound wry lest he be suspected of hinting about his own salary. “I mean I certainly should relish being in that situation.”