The Furnished Room (27 page)

Then they both dried up like actors who have forgotten the script, and looked at each other.

Beckett levelled the gun; an assertion of dominance.

She jabbered again: ‘No, no, no!' Her silk dressinggown was hanging from the door, and she reached to take it down.

Beckett stepped towards her. When she fell, the heavy thud shook the floor. The gown, dislodged from its hook, fell over her, its folds collapsing gently until it was still.

Beckett slapped her cheeks, felt for her heart and pulse, and held a mirror to her lips. Then, by the light of the torch, he inspected her face. It was the face of an ageing woman, shiny with cold cream. The hair, henna'd at the ends and grey at the roots, was twisted into metal curlers. It recalled, in a clear flash of visual memory, the face of the road-accident victim whom he and Dyce had seen; the dead man who had had blood twisted into his flesh like wire.

As before, the knowledge was there without question. This was a dead body.

Panic flooded him. He tried to reconstruct the moments before her fall, but there was only a blank. She had fallen with a crash. Had that crash also contained the report of his gun?

He inspected it. The six cartridges were unfired. He had not shot her, then. But she was dead. He fought back the reeling panic. Somewhere,out of the past a memory emerged. Dyce had said that she was supposed to have a weak heart.

He turned, and again saw his triple image in the mirrors. He raised his arm to break the glass with a blow from the gun. Just in time, he stopped himself, but the momentum of his athletic swing with his arm carried him forward so that he fell with his head on the dressing-table. For a while he stayed in that position, dizzy as a drunk, breathing in the dust of spilt facepowder.

Then he straightened up. He realized that the noise might have woken the companion, and that at any moment he might be discovered. He must leave immediately. The woman had fallen across the doorway, and the door could not be opened. He half-lifted her body and dragged it across the floor. As he did so, her metal hair-curlers made a scraping noise on the linoleum.

He opened the door and stepped out into the passage. The house was in silence. He groped his way down the stairs, his cars strained with the expectation of discovery.

When he gained the garden, he broke into spasms of shuddering. He wrenched open the briefcase and grabbed the jewellery, which he flung far into the bushes. Then he ran out into the road, not going down towards Sealing but uphill towards the open country. He ran crouching, like a commando landing on a beach, with the arm holding the briefcase crippled against his chest. He remembered that he was still wearing the socks, and paused to drag them off and stuff them into his pocket. Then he was running again, up the steep hill, and gasping aloud: ‘Oh God... Oh God... the curlers scraped when I dragged her over the floor... Oh God... Oh God... the curlers scraped on the floor...'

Finally, sheer exhaustion forced him to slacken pace. He walked until Upper Lane became a mud track, through a wood and out into the country. He blundered on without knowing where he was going, walking in order to shut out thought.

A fine rain started to fall. He was oblivious of it until it changed into a downpour. Then he broke into a run again.

His jacket was soaked and his shirt clung to his back. The rain flattened his hair and trickled in rills down his neck. His wet trousers clung to his knees, hampering his progress. Still he ran on, his throat raw with his rasping breaths. He felt as if he was outside his body, running beside himself.

Fields gleamed whitely beside the path. He shone his torch through the rain, and saw that they were cornfields. The corn had been cut and bundled into stooks.

He scrambled over a ditch and up a bank into the field. He lifted one of the stooks and set it down beside another, so that the two formed a tunnel. Then he lay down on his belly and inched his way into the tunnel. There was just enough room for him to lie, cramped and awkward, with the briefcase for a pillow, under the wigwam of corn.

For a while he lay immobile, while his mallet heart and the rawness of his throat gradually eased. He could hear the secret rustle of insects in the corn, and the noise of the rain outside. The corn smelt musty, like sacks in a damp shed.

As his physical condition improved, he could no longer keep himself from thinking. The crime, intended to dynamite the way to freedom, had instead been the ultimate unreality, the concentration of all the previous unreality into a sickening unreal nightmare. He had tried to commit an act of will, but instead events had been taken out of his control. The woman had lain on the floor, and he had not known whether he had killed her. That moment had been the ultimate unreality.

He had had to inspect the gun to find out whether he had fired it. He had not. But that discovery solved nothing. The responsibility for her death was his, although he had not actually killed her.

He did not even know whether, at the last moment, he had intended to kill her. He tried to think back, but his memory was blank. He remembered the events, but not his intention. Had his cry of ‘No... no...' been a denial of intent to kill? He did not know.

He had pointed the gun. Had that been to fire, or merely to threaten? He did not know that, either. He would never know…

His thoughts kept returning to the sound of her curlers scraping the floor. That small incident had become the emblem of horror. It was linked in his mind with the image of the twisted wound on the face of the accident victim. He tried to erase the double image from his mind, but it persisted. He could not escape from it.

If only he knew whether he had intended to kill her. If only he knew why he had pointed the gun, why he had protested: ‘No… no…'

Beckett was numb with cold and cramp. With his hands tucked under his armpits and the hard briefcase pillowing his head, he lay sleepless throughout the night.

It was daylight. He must have slept for a few hours. He crawled from the stooks and stood up. His clothes had dried stiffly and he was shuddering with cold. There was a pain in his right thigh because he had lain on it all night. He limped when he moved.

Around him the coarse white stubble of the corn smoked in the morning sun. A lark rose on rain-darkened wings, soaring higher and higher into the sky, showering its pure notes. Beckett was the only man on a countryside cold-washed by morning.

He limped across the field. His feet were numb and icy in shoes that had dried hard like wooden clogs. His steps bruised a dark trail across the field.

He found a footpath, which led to a main road with a signpost indicating twenty-three miles to London. He set off along the main road, and before long a car stopped for him, and the driver enquired whether he would like a lift.

Beckett assented, and got in.

The driver said that he was not going as far as London, but only to Sealing. Beckett was disappointed at this news, as he wanted to avoid Sealing if possible, but there seemed no alternative.

The driver was a prosperous-looking man, with a good breakfast in his stomach, and his jowls freshly shaven and spruce with after-shave lotion. He said that he was a commercial traveller dealing in novelty goods and ornaments, and indicated the boxes of samples on the back seat. He said that the secret of being a traveller was to like people. ‘I sincerely like people,' he told Beckett. ‘I think of my customers as my friends. That's the way to make them like me, and buy my goods. I stand them drinks, and remember where they spend their holidays so that I can ask whether they had a good time at so-and-so, and sincerely like them.' He then went on to talk of Sealing, and said the Dog and Duck did a good lunch, quite reasonable.

Beckett did not really listen, but he was grateful for the other's flow of talk, as it absolved him from talking himself. He offered the driver a cigarette from a squashed packet.

‘No, thanks all the same,' the driver said. ‘I've got my own.' He indicated three unopened packets wrapped in cellophane, which were in the glove-rack.

Beckett, with hand trembling with cold, held a cigarette that was stained yellow with damp. So far he had not spoken, but had only sat shuddering, subject to waves of nausea that had their source deep down in his physical centre of gravity.

Locked in his nightmare, he was hardly aware of the driver. He felt only a sort of incurious wonder at the plump, confident hands controlling the wheel, and the man's background of saloon bars and commercial hotels and shrewd-eyed laughter over light ales.

On the edge of the town the driver turned left into a car park. ‘Well, this is as far as I go. I have some business in Hallidays, that shop over there. Must catch the buyer bright and early, before he disappears for his coffee-break.'

Beckett got out, and stood clutching his briefcase. He said: ‘Thank you.'

The driver suddenly realized that this was the first time Beckett had spoken. The two men stood facing each other from opposite sides of the bonnet. The driver's face slackened with bewilderment. The parking attendant came up, his ticket-puncher at the ready, but was unnoticed by both of them. Then Beckett turned and started to walk away. The driver called after him: ‘Here ... old chap ... half a mo...'

Beckett did not turn back. He walked away at an even pace. Inwardly, the incident had upset him. Why had the driver stared at him like that? Why had he called out? Was there something about him, Beckett, some mark of guilt that made people stare?

The rear of the large store, Hallidays, formed one of the walls of the car park. A trio of girls, arriving for work, gave him cool glances, their crisp summer frocks flouncing as they went in the staff entrance.

Beckett's panic increased. Everybody was staring at him.

The High Street was thronged with shoppers. He did not know which way to go. Women with shopping baskets jostled him as he stood undecided.

He was thus hesitating when he received a sharp blow on his ankle. He turned, and saw Silent, who had struck him with one of his crutches.

Beckett realized that this was no hallucination, but reality.

Silent said: ‘I've got something to tell you.'

‘What?'

The cripple leaned closer, and whispered with his mouth against Beckett's ear: ‘Don't worry, this isn't the kiss of Judas.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Hold this...' Silent gave him one of his crutches. Then he wound his free arm round Beckett's neck. In this manner, they started to walk together up the street.

Beckett said: ‘I didn't know you lived in Sealing.'

‘I don't. My sister does. I stay with her sometimes.'

Silent's arm was heavy. It was as if, with the crippling of the rest of his body, all his strength had gone into his arms and hands. His hands had the sensitivity of a blind man's. Beckett had seen him, in the past, gauge minute differences in the weight and balance of objects by holding them on his palms. His arms had strength and reach, like an ape's. Now the muscles of his upper arm were pressing into the side of Beckett's neck. It only needed the curving of his arm and a bit more pressure to be a strangle grip. As they progressed up the street, Beckett thought of the words ‘the kiss of Judas'. At the edge of his mind was the premonition of betrayal and disaster. He already knew that Silent would betray him. He compared himself to Sinbad who was forced to carry on his shoulders the Old Man of the Sea, who was throttling him.

He could have asked Silent to slacken his grip. But somehow it had become a point of honour not to. There was an undeclared duel between them. Silent was trying to make Beckett admit defeat and ask for mercy. Beckett was determined that Silent should waste his strength and temper, for nothing. Silent supplemented his weapons with an unpleasant, mocking laugh at intervals.

They turned up a side road, and stopped outside a small terrace house in a row of its identicals. The front door was ajar.

Inside was a gong, which Silent struck with his crutch. There was no response. ‘My sister has gone out. Good.'

In the kitchen, they sat on either side of a table covered with a plastic cloth. The radio on the dresser, turned low, was playing
Housewives' Choice
.

To Beckett, accustomed to seeing Silent in the Soho café world, the setting seemed strange. Silent also appeared embarrassed by the neat domesticity.

Beckett said: ‘I want a drink. Is there any?'

‘Bottom of the larder. Brandy. She keeps it for medicinal purposes.'

Beckett poured brandy into two daffodil-patterned glasses. When he drank, he knew that he had been cold and exhausted and was now better. The brandy went down and formed a centre of heat inside him. It was warm in the kitchen. Condensation had formed on the window behind the check curtains.

Silent enquired: ‘Got your portable chess?'

‘I don't want to play now.'

‘Lend it to me for a moment.'

Beckett took the cardboard box from his pocket.

Silent removed the elastic band that secured the battered lid and set out the pieces. One of the white bishops was missing; the broken one.

Beckett poked in his pockets but could not find the missing piece. ‘Never mind; use a match.'

‘When did you lose that piece?'

‘I have no idea. Use a match.' Then something in Silent's voice made Beckett look up sharply. He met the gaze of the unmatching eyes and suddenly realized that he was dealing with an extremely clever man.

Silent said: ‘You are a fool. You drop things.' His voice had become curt, rapping out words; the voice of authority. Then he raised his glass and said: ‘Your health.' The box had been broken for a long time. The loose piece could have fallen out anywhere. Beckett tried to reconstruct his movements of last night. Had there been any time when the piece could have dropped out of his pocket?