The Beast (10 page)

Of course he exaggerated at times—in fact was doing so now, he realized, as he skidded slightly on the road—but still, if one is going to have a philosophy of life, one might just as well stick to it. Otherwise why have one at all?

His friends, he knew, laughed at him—laughed at his mania for punctuality, for thank-you letters, for leaping to his feet whenever a woman entered the room (some girls looked at him very oddly as he did so, as if they suspected he were sick), for helping old people across the street, for being pleasant and charming at times when others would have sworn—and thought his behaviour either eccentric, or quaint, or plain crazy; and people who didn't like him, or more generally, didn't know what to make of him—and these were the majority of people he came into contact with; he didn't have many friends—thought him cold, hard, and—underneath that smooth exterior—quite dangerously peculiar.

But both friends and others believed that his mania for perfect manners was just that—a mania; and told him,
frequently, that he was neurotic. Which meant little if anything; he thought; and even if it did mean something, he was, on the whole, and in his pale and earnest way, fairly happy with his life. So there was no point in trying to change, even if he had wanted to, or had known what to change to.

He was driving along, thinking about these things,
insisting
to himself that he
was
quite happy, when suddenly, right ahead of him in the fog, he saw not the two tail lights of a car, but a whole series of tail-lights—and
headlights
too—facing in all directions. He stamped his foot on the brake, and felt the car slide towards the mess of lights, its tyres screaming. He watched himself, as from a great distance, and felt quite calm and detached. Well, he told himself, he would be late for dinner, after all. He felt the car starting to spin. He didn't—he wasn't, if he
remembered
rightly, supposed to—try to correct it. He was facing sideways on the road. Backwards. Sideways again.
Forward
. He was almost on the other cars, parked at all angles in the middle of the autostrada. He saw white, ghostly faces staring at him in panic.

And then he stopped. He sat there, stunned, and didn't move for a moment or two. He became conscious of people shouting, of people—released from their fear that he was going to crash into them—running about. He became
conscious
of someone screaming. And then, as he sat there, sweating, feeling faint—he saw someone walking towards him from out of the dim confusion. It was a girl. She was walking slowly, right down the white line that divided the lanes. She had her hands held out in front of her, as if she were sleep-walking, or doing some test to see if she were drunk; and it was only when she was nearly on him—when he suddenly realized that she wasn't aware of his car, and
was going to walk straight into him—that he also saw that she had blood pouring down her face. It was very red in the white and brightly lit fog. But before he could leap out and help her she did finally pause, and seem to take stock of her surroundings, and herself. She looked down at her blood-soaked camel coat. She looked down at the bumper of his car, which was only a yard away from her shins. She looked—she stared, unbelievingly—at her watch. (Was she, too, going to be late for an appointment?) And then she stared into his car, at him. She stared right in his face, though she could hardly have seen it. She shook her head. She smiled slightly. And then, not taking her eyes off him—they were big, and still, strangely, perfectly made up beneath the blood that was welling over her brows and down her cheeks—she started to laugh. And he sat there in his car, and couldn't move. She had transfixed him, hypnotized him. She was young—not more than twenty—and, in spite of the blood, ripely and expensively beautiful. But her laugh was the laugh of an old woman. It was a quiet, lonely, bitter laugh. A terrible laugh. And it hypnotized him. He couldn't move—and all he could feel, and tell himself, was that no one, ever, in whatever circumstances, should laugh like that. She stood there, scarlet in the icy fog, and blocked his way—he forgot that there were other people beyond her—to Venice. And she laughed. And then, as he became conscious of the flashing blue lights of police cars, and heard the sirens of
ambulances
, she turned away, and went back towards the horror she had come from.

There was, he guessed, nothing he could do; and the police, in fact, shouted at people to stay in their cars. So he waited, without moving, for an hour before finally driving on. As soon as he was able to, he turned off the
autostrada, and took the regular road back to Desenzano.

*

He was getting out of the lift when he heard his phone ringing. It would, he imagined, be his friends calling to find out what had happened to him. To him, of all people—simply not turning up to dinner, without so much as a phone call of explanation! He felt himself blushing with shame, and the palms of his hands becoming wet with sweat. It would have been quite easy to stop at some bar, or service station, and call. Or perhaps he should have gone on to Venice anyway. He would have been more than an hour late; but under the circumstances …

He opened the door of his apartment, and ran into the studio, where the phone was. He didn't even stop to turn on the light.

‘Hello,' he said breathlessly, embarrassedly, his excuses ready.

‘Hello,' a voice—the voice of earlier—whispered. ‘You're back.'

‘Yes,' Andrew said; and then politely, but firmly, ‘and I would be most grateful if you would stop calling me.
Goodbye
.'

He put the receiver down and went to turn the light on.

The phone rang again.

‘Hello.'

‘Please don't hang up,' the voice whispered. ‘I'm a friend of yours.'

‘Who are you?'

‘A friend.'

‘Look,' Andrew insisted. ‘Please stop this. If you're a friend of mine, tell me who you are. Otherwise stop bothering me.' He sounded, he heard, quite indignant.

‘Don't be cross Andrew, please,' the voice breathed.

I'm not cross. I just don't like stupid games. And please don't call me any more.'

‘But I want to see you.'

‘Well—oh—'. He felt helpless.

‘Can I?' the voice whispered eagerly.

And then, suddenly, Andrew was no longer firm or even indignant. He was, as he had been earlier that evening, disturbed, and even frightened. ‘No,' he said. ‘I don't want to see you.'

He shivered, in his warm untidy apartment, and listened to the lake across the road. How cold it sounded …

‘You're not English, are you,' the voice whispered.

‘Yes, of course I'm English.'

‘No you're not. You have a slight accent. I heard it just then.' There was a pause. ‘Or perhaps you don't have any accent at all, which is strange. After all, everyone has an accent of one sort or another, don't they? Where are you from?'

‘I'm English,' Andrew repeated, and shivered again.

How cold it must have been when he was born. As cold as the waters of the winter lake …

‘Please
can I see you?' the voice insisted quietly.

‘No,' Andrew said. ‘And now I'm going to hang up. Goodbye.'

He put the receiver down, waited for a couple of seconds, lifted it again, made sure he had a dialling tone, and dialled the number of his friends in Venice.

A woman answered.

‘Hello, May,' he said with relief.

‘Andrew?'

‘Yes.'

‘Where are you?'

‘At home.'

There was a silence at the other end of the line for a moment. And then, explosively, a laugh. A loud, coarse, and vulgar laugh.

Andrew was startled, and wondered whether he had said something funny. He often wondered that when people laughed, because he had no sense of humour himself—there had been no room for laughter in that solidly furnished house in Cheam—and what other people found funny mystified him. He did, however, reflect that this was the second time tonight someone had laughed at him.

He said—with what he hoped was amusement in his voice, since he didn't want to be thought priggish—‘Did I say something?'

May—fat American May, who liked to mother him and always told him she understood him—by way of answer shrieked to her husband—who was probably sitting near the phone, but would have heard her if he'd been several canals away—‘Tony, Andrew forgot. He forgot!
Andrew.'
Another shriek of laughter.

Andrew didn't hear what Tony said, but since he, too, was fairly humourless, guessed it was something like ‘Well?'

‘
Andrew
,' May stressed. ‘
Andrew
. Andrew's never
forgotten
anything in his life.' Yet another shriek. ‘Oh I'm glad. I always knew he was human. Andrew?'

‘Yes,' Andrew murmured.

‘You still there?'

‘Yes,' he repeated. He wondered whether he should explain that he
hadn't
forgotten. But the idea that he had seemed to please May so much that he decided it would be politer not to. ‘I don't know what's happened to me,' he said. And then, since he still hadn't done what he should have done first, he said ‘I'm most terribly sorry.'

‘Oh that's all right honey,' May laughed. ‘You've made my evening.'

She chattered on for another full five minutes before Andrew, having arranged to see them the following week, was able to hang up. But when he did, he was so worn out that he forgot, momentarily, about his previous caller—and lifted the receiver without any hesitation the moment the phone rang again—which it did immediately after he had finished with May.

‘Hello.'

‘Please don't hang up.' the voice whispered.

‘Look,' Andrew said as sternly as he could, ‘this has got to stop. I shall call the telephone company and ask them to trace your number, and then call the police.'

The voice hung up.

Five minutes later, as Andrew went into his kitchen to prepare himself something to eat, the phone rang yet again.

Before he could even say ‘hello,' the voice whispered, ‘I'm calling from a public phone. No one would ever be able to trace me. Goodnight Andrew.'

‘
Goodnight
.'

*

Next morning—a fine, clear, sunny morning—as he started making a drawing for a new painting, there was another call.

‘Good morning, Andrew.'

‘Look, I'm trying to work. Will you please stop this ridiculous game. Goodbye.'

Half an hour later, another.

‘I just want to see you.'

‘No.'

Half an hour later, another.

‘
Please
.'

Andrew slammed the phone down. He could, he
supposed
, take the phone off the hook. But he didn't want to. It meant giving in to this lunatic, whoever he or she was. Besides, he might have to keep it off for days. And if someone else—a friend—was trying to reach him, well, it just wasn't right to make them keep on trying. They might think he was sick, and make a journey to come and see him. No. It was out of the question. One couldn't, mustn't, capitulate before the rude chaotic forces in the world. One must bear with them, wear them out,
impose
oneself on them.

Still, he was gravely tempted to quit the battle when, half an hour later, the voice said ‘I'm sorry to keep
disturbing
you Andrew, but if we could just meet for a second—'

‘No,' Andrew said.

Half an hour later he said, ‘No,' again.

Half an hour later he said, ‘No,' again.

Half an hour later he said, wearily, ‘Very well.'

It was, he thought, the only thing to do.

‘Where?', he said.

‘Wherever you like.'

‘On the jetty then.'

‘Yes. Very good.'

‘When?'

‘Whenever you like.'

Andrew looked at his watch.

‘At two-thirty.'

‘Very good.'

‘And please be punctual.'

‘Oh I shall. How shall I recognize you?'

‘I thought you said you were a friend.'

‘I am—I just thought maybe you'd changed since last I saw you.'

‘No,' Andrew said. ‘I never change. How shall I recognize you?'

‘Oh, you'll recognize me,' the voice whispered. ‘Till two-thirty then. Goodbye.'

After Andrew had hung up he went over to the window. Yes, he thought, it was the best thing to do. Put an end to all this nonsense. And really, that was all it was—nonsense. There was nothing frightening about the calls today. Not with the December sun sparkling on the lake, and the green pines outside, and—since it was Tuesday and market day in Desenzano—especially not with so many people about.

*

At ten minutes past two he washed his hands, put on a clean pair of jeans, a brown leather jacket, threw a scarlet scarf around his neck, and set off to walk the couple of hundred yards to the port, and the jetty.

He allowed himself all this time to walk such a short distance because he invariably met someone he knew—if just by sight—when he went out, and always felt it his duty as a near citizen to stop, shake hands, give an invisible bow and an invisible click of the heels, and enquire about wives, husbands, children, or simply to comment on the weather or the state of the world. He was quite well known in the town. He was the English—or was he German? Or American? Some people even asked him if he were Polish, or Russian—artist. The polite and peculiar English artist, who always spoke to one, but always addressed one as if he were addressing a whole group of people. The stiff and elusive English artist, who had never, as far as it was known—and it was known pretty far—gone to bed with anyone in the town; neither man, woman, nor child.

Certain things were expected of artists …