The Furnished Room (28 page)

‘Nothing personal,' Silent said. ‘I don't care for anyone; they can all go and stuff themselves as far as I'm concerned. Most people are stupid, and humanity would be no worse off without them. But the ones who do care, the ones who like or dislike their fellow men, seem to think that you're a decent enough bloke. So it's nothing personal. I buy goods and sell information; I am a businessman. The people concerned don't interest me.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Precisely this. First of all, I saw you in the High Street last night. I spun the memory machine and what emerged was this: Dick Dyce has got an elderly relative living in Sealing. Joe Beckett is in Sealing. Conclusion, Joe is probably here in connection with Dick. Right?'

Beckett said nothing.

‘Now, when somebody wants to find out something, they ask me. Because I am a very informed man. So I wasn't particularly surprised when two gentlemen called here early this morning, and asked if I knew anything of a person named Mrs Kathleen Dyce Grantley.'

‘Police?'

‘They hadn't come to read the gas meter. It appears that Mrs Grantley had been found in a condition that most people try to avoid. I mean dead.'

Beckett, determined to avoid committing himself, got up and looked out of the window. There was a row of back gardens, and a woman was hanging up washing in one of them.

Silent continued: ‘The man who did it must have been an amateur, because he threw away the jewellery he had stolen. Threw it into the bushes. Also he dropped something in the bedroom, beside the dressing-table. A small object of white plastic imitation ivory.'

‘Did the police know what it was?'

‘No. But they showed it to me. And I knew.' Silent tapped his forehead. ‘There's a computer in here, you know. I keep facts in my brain.'

Beckett exclaimed angrily: ‘Why did you bring me here?'

‘Because I'm a cripple, of course, and needed somebody to help me home. Your support served as well as anybody's. Besides, it might not have occurred to you, but the police are looking for you. So why not stop here, instead of wandering in the streets?”

‘No. I'm going.'

‘You can't leave by the station.'

‘Why not?'

‘Because, of course, the police will try to intercept you there. What a hopeless amateur you are!' Then Silent began to gasp, and flopped back in his chair. ‘Oh, I'm exhausted. I've been subjecting myself to too much exertion. First there was the excitement of the police calling, and the identification of the chess-piece. And after that, patrolling Sealing in search of you. That walk back from the High Street has finished me. You must help me upstairs to bed.'

‘All right. Put your arm round my shoulder again. Beckett helped Silent up the stairs. This time, the cripple's weight was the heaviness of exhaustion rather than active pressure.

‘My sister... bloody inconsiderate bitch... why does she give me a room upstairs instead of downstairs?...'

Beckett panted with the physical effort. He managed to get Silent to the top of the flight. In the bedroom, he helped the cripple on to the bed.

Silent collapsed. He looked as useless as a wreck on the shore.

Beckett commented: ‘You're clever, aren't you? You keep in with the Mick's Café set of pilferers on small deals. And work for the police on big ones.'

'That's business.' Then Silent added: ‘I'm not a pretty sight. I can't get a woman. Even a noisy little nobody, a jumped-up little chit like Ilsa Barnes, can laugh at me. But when it comes to brains, then I have the laugh on them.'

Beckett realized that Silent, who despised and insulted everybody in Mick's, loved Ilsa.

‘You sleep with her, don't you? You're her lover.'

Beckett did not reply. He collected his briefcase from the kitchen and left the house.

In the telephone kiosk, he asked for the weekend number that Dyce had given him. There was a delay while one exchange contacted the other. He heard a snatch of popular song on the line, then silence. He clutched the briefcase, willing the operator to hurry. A woman's voice answered the phone. He asked for Captain Dyce. There was another delay while Dyce was called.

Finally Dyce's voice said: ‘Hello? Yes?'

They had prearranged a code whereby Beckett could communicate his success or failure. Now he found that he could not remember the code-words. His mind was blank.

Dyce repeated: ‘Hello?'

‘I had to phone you. I've bungled it.'

There was silence. Beckett thought: Why doesn't he say something? He said: ‘Are you there?'

‘Yes, I'm here. What's happened?'

‘I went through with it all right. But I've been found out. They're after me.'

‘Christ, no!'

He could hear his own breathing and Dyce's. Looking through the glass wall of the kiosk, he noticed that the market clock-tower was ornamented with Gothic spires and that the time was five-to-ten.

‘No, Christ almighty! How on earth could you have gone wrong? What happened? Have you done for both of us?'

‘Not for you.'

Sharply: ‘What?'

Beckett stopped looking at the clock-tower. He said: ‘You're not necessarily done for. You can keep out of the whole thing. I was broke. I knew your aunt had money and jewellery on her premises. I decided to burgle her house, so I stole your service revolvers without your knowledge. Etc.'

‘Are you on the level?'

‘There's no point in two people getting done for one crime.'

‘No,' Dyce said quickly. ‘Of course not.'

‘All right then.'

‘Listen, this phone is in the dining-room. Someone might come in.'

‘All right. Well, goodbye.'

‘Wait...'

‘What?'

‘Wait... No, nothing.' Dyce said: ‘Joe?'

‘I'm here.'

‘I mean, you can take care of yourself all right, can't you?'

Beckett smiled. He replaced the receiver and left the kiosk. As Silent had warned him about the station, he decided that his best plan would be to walk to the next town, Horsley, from where he could take a Green Line bus to Victoria.

Sealing and Horsley are both situated in valleys, separated by a high sandstone ridge. The ridge is so high that, on fine days, one can see three counties. Or perhaps it is five. He could not remember.

He climbed the steep lane. The hedgerow had a country smell like brown bread, and the odour of wet earth stirred secretly.

When he reached the heights, a sailor gale hit him. The road lay along the spine of the ridge, flanked by steep drops on either side, and formed a target for bad weather.

The gale buffeted him so that it was difficult to stand upright. Trees, uprooted by last night's storm, had fallen across the road and torn leaves hung from the telegraph wires. He was alone on the high altitude. He flung himself into the gale like a swimmer into the sea and gulped down draughts of cold air. Unlike town air, which only reaches the edge of the nostrils, country air fills the lungs. Beckett felt drunk with it. The exhilaration was so great that he could hardly hold it. He started to run, with his head back and his arms outflung, in order to work off some of the joy that threatened to explode inside him.

As he ran, he shouted aloud into the deafening wind: ‘Glory... glory... glory!...'

Then he pulled up, and stood, with the wind outlining him coldly, like a god surveying the countryside arrayed below him.

A fine drizzle fell, and there were different diffusions of light. Milk white, electric light, foggy purple, the acid-thinned grey of morning mists, curdled light, veils of black crepe, water-colour washes, choking industrial black and sulphur, intensities of lemon, gold and silver radiance — all were choral like the ranks of angels, cherubim and seraphim.

Since he had left Silent, his tyrannical will had abdicated, his stubborn mind had stopped forcing matters, and he had abandoned hope. Having made these rejections, he received, like grace, an insight that was more potent than formal knowledge. Blessed, he gave praise and blessing to all creation. Previously, he had felt paralysed in a world without meaning. Now he experienced the polar opposite state; he was strong and had potentialities, and he affirmed everything.

He had lived in a negative hell that was absence of God. His present vision was that God was the common force manifested in all nature and in the conscious receptacle of his own soul. This force was at high tide in his soul. It was vital and yet peaceful, like exultation. It gave him back his lost sense of meaning.

Meaning confers freedom from paralysis. Beckett recognized that his newfound freedom entailed the responsibility of retaining and increasing it. Accordingly, he made various resolutions.

He resolved to make his experience on this hill the centre of his life, and to try to re-attain its ecstasy. He resolved to realize his potentialities, by study, work, and living, and, to fight against sliding back into the trough of boredom and lethargy. He finally resolved to undergo whatever sentence he received for his crime of manslaughter without complaint, and without being broken by it.

It occurred to him that although he was an agnostic he had used religious terminology best to express his inexpressible experience. The concepts God, hell, and rebirth were all religious. This led to the conclusion that religion was rooted in subjective experience, which accounted for the success of religion. It seemed to him that religious doctrines were formal projections of human experience and paradox. He was glad that he had arrived at this idea, as it cured his bitterness against his Catholic upbringing.

He left the road and descended to Horsley by way of a track down the sharp flank of the ridge. He moved in leaps and bounds; loose scree spurted from his heels. His momentum prevented a fall; after a perilous leap he went straight on to the next before he had time to fall.

He took the coach to Victoria, then the bus to Notting Hill. He had decided to go to the police station and give himself up. He chose the local police station because he wanted to complete his circuit; to return to the district where he had fought the looming walls of his bedsitter, where the air had swollen heavy and oppressive with the vitality it had drained from him, where he had lain sick with accidie, like a python, crushing his chest and coiled round his immobilized limbs.

There was something dashing and daring in his decision to return. He wanted to show that he could get back to base before voluntarily giving himself up. He had caused a death, and would suffer for it. It seemed to him that these two facts were on the heroic level. They had an order, an expensive tragedy, which was absent from the haphazard trivialities that dotted the lives of most people.

Near Tewkesbury Road, a woman spoke to him. Momentarily, he did not recognize her. She was a housewife, drearily clothed, holding a shopping-bag of groceries. Then he realized that she was Gash's landlady. She said: ‘I thought you should know the bad news. It was such a shock.'

‘News?'

‘Poor Mr Gash passed away last night.'

He looked at her, frowning. Then he looked at the pavement. Then at her again. He said: ‘No. No, that's terrible.'

‘I didn't know he was so ill. I mean, he hadn't ever told me about it. He hadn't ever seen a doctor. All the time he was having these attacks of asthma, but he never complained. But I mean, he should have gone to a specialist about it, shouldn't he?'

‘Yes.'

‘A lady I knew had this asthma, and she went to a specialist and had injections. She had to keep off things, various things to eat, as well. But poor Mr Gash didn't take care of himself at all. He was all for the spirit and never mind the body. Well, that doesn't do any good, does it?'

He agreed absentmindedly. ‘No.' Then he said: ‘Asthma?'

‘Yes. That's what the doctor said, when he came this morning. I found him this morning, you see. I could tell he was dead, and I called the doctor.'

‘Poor Gash, dying alone.'

‘I went into his room this morning, you see, to ask him, if he'd like a cup of tea as we were making one for ourselves. And when he didn't answer me, I thought at first that he was just in one of his far-away states. Then I asked him again: “How about a nice cuppa tea, Mr Gash?” And he still didn't answer.'

Beckett rubbed his fist between his brows.

She said: ‘He's been lodging with me for years now, and I'd sort of got fond of him, in spite of his odd habits. I mean, there wasn't any harm in him, was there? A bit cranky, but a kind old bird.”

He tried to think of something to say. He repeated: ‘It's terrible.'

‘Anyway, I've phoned his daughter, and she'll be coming up to take care of the arrangements. She'll let you know about the funeral and everything.'

‘Thanks.'

‘Well, I thought you should know. You were the only person who ever visited him. His only friend, so to speak.'

They parted. When Beckett reached Gash's house, he paused to notice the closed curtains. Inside, the body of Gash would be laid out on his pile of blankets on the floor, with death drawn down over the eyes. He wondered whether his own belongings were still in the corner where he had left them. The thought of Gash dead, Dyce's aunt dead, and his mother dying, produced a sharp lurch of delight in being alive himself.

He noticed that, opposite his old lodging, a man was sauntering with hands in pockets. The man stopped and looked up at the windows. Then he started to cross the road towards the house.

Beckett was sure that the man was a policeman. He broke out in a sweat of shock. His brain was confused, and he could only stand and gape at the policeman. Then, from the confusion of his brain, the dominant impulse emerged: to run. He wanted to run and escape while there was still time.