The Man Who Killed Himself (14 page)

Although so much of the past had gone his mother’s watercolour scenes remained. He took down the little pictures from the walls, put them into the car, and drove out over the downs. During the afternoon he revisited the scene of each picture, and found them all changed. ‘West Blatchington, the Mill’ had been shown as an idyllic rural scene, but it stood now among a spate of suburban building. ‘The Downs at Peacehaven’ bore no resemblance to the hills dotted with a pretty house or two shown in her mild greens and blues. Instead, a great mess of brick sprawled over the whole area like some terrible red growth. Not one of the scenes was as she had shown it. He knew that this was to be expected, yet it troubled him. The country today belonged to the new housing complexes and the petrol pump. The world of his childhood, the world his mother painted, had been destroyed. Back in the bungalow he pored over the watercolours as though they could provide an answer to the problems of his life, and realised what was wrong. According to a book he had read about Sussex the picture of the Devil’s Dyke should have shown a railway where she depicted a green wash of down. She had left out the railway because it would have spoiled the picture. Were the other paintings equally remote from reality? When he looked up other books he found that Peacehaven in the early nineteen twenties could not possibly have looked as she had shown it, and it seemed to him that this doubt about the veracity of the pictures must extend to the whole of his childhood life. Had it ever really existed as he remembered it? His mother had died of what was then called heart disease when he was twenty-one. How much did he really know about her? Did this image of a woman in a floppy hat, this indulgent mother trying to preserve him from the harshness of the world, correspond with the truth? How deep had been her disappointment when it became clear that he was not bright enough to get a University scholarship and would have to take a job when he left grammar school? What had she felt during the last years in the little flat at Swiss Cottage where she died? It was not until the funeral that he had seen his father again, and then he wondered how he had ever felt the fear he was now able to acknowledge of this outspoken but meticulously neat and dapper man. They found little to say to each other, but they met two or three times a year, conversing with the politeness of strangers. His father had written a letter of sympathy after Clare’s death which remained unanswered.

These events were clouded in his mind, he had always refused to discuss them with himself, and it seemed to him that the rest of his life must consist of such an unending discussion. He could remember nothing at all of the years before his mother’s death when he had left school and gone to work at the insurance office in which he had stayed until his call-up. Had he come home each evening to a cooked meal, did they ever go out together? He could remember nothing except the three heart attacks she had suffered in the months before she died, the rest was the woman in the floppy hat on the downs painting her untrue pictures. He had shown the pictures to Clare just after their marriage, and a little later she had begun to attend art classes. Was it possible that his feelings about his mother had affected his relationship with Clare?

He hung up the pictures again, ate a tin of food and went to bed. He lay sleepless until four in the morning. Around him in the darkness stretched the barren land of freedom.

The True Identity of Arthur Brownjohn

He saw the Identikit picture in the paper the next morning. Under the heading HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN? was a composite picture of a man with thick hair, a squashy nose, large staring eyes, a little beard and the caption: ‘This is an Identikit picture made with the help of eye witnesses of a man the police would like to interview in connection with the Fraycut murder case. Further details: brown hair and beard, about 5 ft 9 inches tall, stockily built, possibly wearing tweed suit or sports jacket.’ He looked at the picture and hugged himself because of its unlikeness to the facts. Two inches had been added to his height, and ‘stockily built’ was a tribute to the effect of the suit. At the same time he felt a little indignant about that squashy nose. His nose certainly could not be called squashy.

The Identikit picture had appeared before, although he had missed it, in the paper. It was the joint product of the recollections of the Romany House porter, the barmaid at Fraycut (who had insisted on the staring eyes), the clerk at the Weybridge hotel and Mr Lillicrapp, as interpreted by the artist who had drawn it for the police. Inspector Coverdale had no great faith in the accuracy of the Identikit, and as usual the people who had seen Mellon were by no means agreed about such vital matters as his height, which had been placed between five feet six and five feet eleven inches. Indeed, Coverdale had no longer much expectation that they would find Mellon at all. He believed the man to be an experienced crook known to Scotland Yard under another name, that the murder had been prompted by Mrs Brownjohn’s discovery of his real identity, and that Mellon had almost certainly left the country. The best chance of laying hands on him would come when he started up another Lonely Hearts agency elsewhere, as he almost certainly would do, and Interpol had been duly alerted. In the meantime it was necessary to go through the motions.

The issue of the paper containing the Identikit picture recorded also the verdicts in the case of John Termaxian and Patricia Parker, who had received sentences of four years and nine months respectively. Termaxian had been in prison twice before for similar offences, and the Judge had referred to him as ‘a blight on society, feeding on the weakness of foolish and lecherous men.’ He had regarded Parker as Termaxian’s agent, and very much under his influence. There was no mention of the source from which they had obtained the name of Mr X.

Strangely enough this paragraph depressed rather than pleased him. After reading it he went out into the garden, but worked there for only half an hour. He was in the act of turning over earth in a patch destined to be a flower border next year when an almost physical revulsion from what he was doing made him stop. He cleaned the fork and trowel he had been using, put them back in the garage, and returned to the bungalow. In the kitchen he drew himself a glass of water, sat down at a table and stared at the refrigerator. It had occurred to him that, in any meaningful sense, he did not exist. He remembered a strange novel he had read, about a man whose whole inner life had been destroyed by the things that happened to him, but who functioned perfectly to all outward appearance and even flourished, so that when he was offered an academic post ‘the Faculty had no idea that it was a glacial shell of a man who had come among them’ instead of a real human being. Was this his own situation? Arthur Brownjohn had wished to be free of Clare’s domination, Easonby Mellon had been trapped in a net from which it had seemed essential to break out. He had escaped from Clare, he had broken out of the net, he was free – but he was forced to the conclusion that freedom only existed in relation to restriction. ‘The habits by which we
live
and
think
are not what we
believe
’
–
that, or something like it, was what he had written in his diary. But what did he believe, what did he wish to do with his freedom? The things in which he had taken pleasure, the slot racing layout in the attic, the piles of letters round his ankles, even the bits of nonsense with Joan, seemed to have had no existence independent of the people with whom they were associated. ‘I could have had the biggest slot racing layout in the country,’ he thought, and had a vision of the kind of house he might have bought, a Victorian barracks with a great glass-roofed room like a monster conservatory in which the whole floor was covered with a network of tracks, bridges, flyovers, along which there raced twenty different types of car. He could have bought such a house, he could still buy it, but he knew that he would never do so, for although he was able to conjure up the vision it no longer excited him. Slot racing had not been a passion but a reaction, a means of asserting his identity against Clare. Now that she was gone he no longer needed it. What was the true identity of Arthur Brownjohn? Surely he must take pleasure in sights and sounds, must enjoy food and want sex as Easonby Mellon had wanted it? He remembered Joan’s desperate clutching at his parts in the cinema, and shuddered away from the thought that he was no more than ‘a glacial shell’ able to dig gardens and make cupboards but totally without emotion because heart and guts had been removed. There must be people and situations who would revive the sleeping soldier, and reveal his real nature. It was to discover them that he went to Brighton.

He watched himself with detachment, in the spirit of a doctor trying out various forms of treatment. The drive through the downs and along the main road, now, did that excite him? The sense of achievement he felt in first handling a car had long since vanished, but now he deliberately accelerated to pass other cars on bends and at the brows of hills, answering blares of protest with furious hooting of his own. At one point he passed another car near the top of a hill to find a great Bentley coming at him. He cut in sharply on the car he had just passed, which was forced to brake suddenly. Both the Bentley and the car behind him hooted, and this time he did not trouble to hoot back. ‘Any emotion involved there, Mr Brownjohn, exhilaration, fear, anything at all?’ the doctor asked, and he had to shake his head in reply. He had felt nothing. Yet that was not quite true, for he had taken avoiding action, so that the instinct of self-preservation must still exist. In the pleasure of realising this he passed and cut in on another car. In the town he parked the car just behind the Palace Pier.

Come to Doctor Brighton who cures all ills. Is the prognosis favourable, Doctor? Too soon to tell, my son. For an hour he bathed in the fantasy of the Royal Pavilion. Below the onion domes he wandered in a Chinese and Indian dream, columns sprawling out as palm trees, tented ceilings down which crawled gilded dragons, great wall paintings of Chinese landscapes like those that made the Music Room resemble a lacquer cabinet. Would it be possible to live in such a cabinet, in such a world? Pagodas and temples, formal rippling rivers with sampans frozen on them as though in the performance of a ritual, palm trees and bamboos, furnishings that dazzled the senses by their colour and disturbed them by their ornamentation – he found himself thinking first that these existed in a different world from that of his mother’s watercolours and then that the furniture would never have done for Clare and The Laurels. He laughed aloud at the thought, and an attendant gave him a reproving glance.

After the Pavilion the Lanes, those narrow alleys right in the heart of the town, bounded by North, West and East Streets, and stuffed with antique shops where in the summer American voices could be heard translating everything into the music of dollars. He drifted from shop to shop, staring at collections of Victorian fire irons, at panelled pine mantelpieces, at windows full of old medals.

One shop window had a crowd around it, and mixing with them he saw that it held a collection of chamber pots of different sizes. He was about to turn away when he noticed a number of soapstone figures on a shelf above. One of them was his Buddha! He pushed his way through the crowd and entered the shop. A woman in a green dress greeted him. He pointed to the figure.

‘The Buddha?’ She took it off the shelf, her red-tipped fingers caressed it. ‘You like him? I think he’s fun.’ She told him the price on the base. It was half what he had paid in London.

‘I wanted to know – I wonder if you could tell me where you bought it?’

‘I’m not sure that I know, and even if I did know it isn’t policy to say.’

‘I have a special reason. I believe it is – that is, it once belonged to me.’

She nodded in a humouring way and went to the back of the shop. When she came back she said, ‘I bought it at a country sale. Nearly a year ago. Shouldn’t admit I’ve had it for a year, should I, but you see I’m frank.’

A year ago! He said something confused about that being impossible. She raised her thin, plucked eyebrows. ‘They’re not very uncommon, you know.’

‘Not very uncommon?’ The man had told him it was a piece of individual Indian craftsmanship.

‘I’m a terrible saleswoman, but yes, that’s right. Quite a lot of them were made in several sizes. I’d consider an offer. Since we’ve had it so long.’ Her lips curled. They were thin, but a Cupid’s bow had been painted over them.

‘No, thank you. I’m afraid it’s a mistake, I thought it was the one I had.’

‘Perfectly all right. Don’t you think it’s a fun window?’

‘Window?’ He stared in alarm at the clear glass.

‘You know. The indispensable article of bedroom furniture. Draws the crowds, but nobody comes in to buy.’ She smiled now with an open mouth. He saw her teeth, white and regular, and the dark cavern behind them.

‘No, thank you,’ he said meaninglessly, and edged his way out. It did not matter, nothing at all was affected by it, but he was upset by a feeling that he had been tricked again.

What did he expect Brighton to do for him? He hardly knew. He walked uncertainly along to the Marine Parade, along the promenade towards the West Pier, and then on to the beach. He began to throw stones into the sea. The stones were smooth and cool in his palm, and as he flung them, with a jerky round arm motion, some memory stirred in his mind which he was unable to trace. There were few people on the beach, but a boy came and stood beside him and then began to pick up and throw stones himself. The boy made them skim over the water, bouncing several times before they disappeared.

‘That was a sevener,’ he said after one particularly good throw. Arthur flung a stone which sank ignominiously without bouncing at all. ‘You don’t do it right.’

‘I expect not.’

‘You want to get flat stones. Then like this.’ He sent one skimming like a speedboat. ‘See?’

The memory came back to him. On one of the rare days when they stayed in Brighton his mother had left him playing on the beach. He had joined half a dozen other boys around a boat, and they had laughed at him first because he would not go into the sea (his mother had told him it was too rough) and then because he could not throw stones properly. ‘You throw like a girl,’ they said. He had been weeping when his mother returned.

‘You got the time, mister?’

‘Ten minutes past six.’

‘I got to get back to tea.’

‘Wait a minute, I’ll walk with you.’

The boy looked at him with the fearfulness shown by the young at any kind of involvement with their elders, then backed away. ‘Wait,’ Arthur appealed. He put his hand in his pocket, took out a coin, threw it. Silver glinted in the air. The boy snapped up the coin like a lizard stretching its tongue for a fly, then ran. Arthur climbed wearily up the beach, the stones hard under his feet.

Later he went on to the Palace Pier and rode on the little electric cars. All the other cars seemed to be occupied by couples, the boys driving, the girls beside them shrieking with laughter. He steered his own car deliberately at others. After the crashes the girls laughed louder than ever. One pretty doll-like girl wore a paper hat in red, white and blue, and a badge pinned over one breast which read I AM A VIRGIN. Beneath these capitals was a small longer word – what was it? He peered to see, without success. When the ride ended and he walked off the shiny floor the couple came up to him.

‘What’s up, Jack?’ the boy said. He was a head taller than Arthur, and he wore long sideboards.

‘I beg your pardon.’ He could see the word now. It was
Islander.

‘You do, eh? I said, what’s up?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘You don’t? You wouldn’t. He’s a creep, Marilyn, I told you.’

‘He’s creepy,’ the girl agreed, and burst into fresh peals of laughter.

He walked away down the boards of the pier. Unintelligible threats and obscenities followed him.

Seven-fifteen. He was sitting in a bar in a road parallel with the sea front sipping gin and tonic. Brighton had solved nothing, the doctor had failed. It was time to drive away again. The barman said, ‘You want to see some action?’ He slipped a card across the bar’s shiny leatherette surface.

He nodded without knowing what was meant.

‘Members only, but this’ll get you in. Say Carlo sent you.’

He nodded again. The card said simply
Robin Hood
, with an address in Kemp Town. The place, when he found it, looked like a restaurant, but the door was closed. On the right hand side of it a painted and tipped arrow pointed to a bell, and he pushed this. A slit in the door opened, an eye looked at him.

‘Carlo sent me.’ The door opened. He confronted a girl dressed in a short jerkin and tights of Lincoln green. A green forage cap with a feather in it was set on her head, and a quiver containing arrows was slung over her shoulder.

The door closed again. The light was dim. What looked like real trees were growing on either side of him. Straight ahead he saw an oak door with the legend above it: ‘Robin Hood’s Cave.’ To the left stood a realistic gibbet with a noose hanging from it. A voice shrieked in his ear: ‘Eat ye and drink ye, my merry men.’

‘What was that?’

‘Jock.’ The girl indicated a parrot which glared from foliage. He touched one of the trees. It was made of plastic.