The Secret Journey (29 page)

His hard horny hand began to shake as though from a sudden fit of impatience. It certainly looked as though Mr. Corkran might crush the instrument into powder, such was the tensity of his hold upon the receiver.

‘Oh! I think I must consider that, Corkran. I'll ring you up later. I thought you would be pleased to know that I was awarded costs this morning in that Felton case.'

‘Oh, very good, mam. Very good. I'm very glad to hear it. Well, I shall be right here the moment you ring through. I can't do anything until you do,' and he put down the receiver.

For the third time he went back into the kitchen and waited.

‘I'm rather puzzled,' he said aloud. ‘And I'd be a fool not to admit it. Why does she suddenly want to renew this loan—why, a single glance at the book would show her it's asking for trouble. Perhaps she thinks they've come into money.'

It was puzzling, this sudden turning off of the screw, this withdrawal of the finger from the button.

‘I'm sure she's not right. Certain of it.'

Moved by a curious thought, he went out of the kitchen and made his way to Anna Ragner's private room and went straight to the wall where the safe was. It was locked. One could not see it until the small curtain was drawn back. He heaved a sigh of relief. ‘I was a fool ever to think she'd leave it unlocked. Still, she said such queer things last night.' He had every conceivable right to come here and inspect it. Closing the door, he went up to her room.

Moved by the same curiosity as that which had sent him to inspect the safe, he turned the knob of the door and looked in. Then he went inside and closed the door. The very air of the room radiated femininity. He sat down gingerly on the edge of the bed. Then he looked around the room.

‘She's a sight more untidy than I am,' was his first thought, as his eyes fell upon the heavy mahogany dressing-table, littered with scent-bottles, packets open and packets unopened, from which the fragrance of various shampoo-powders exhaled. The mirror-glass was spotted here and there by flecks of a pinkish-white powder.

‘This is where she stands and looks at herself,' said Mr. Corkran to himself. ‘This is where she dresses and where she undresses. This is where she lies,' he tapped the bed with his finger, ‘and here she sits and thinks and lies and thinks. H'm!' He turned round and looked at the table at the side of the bed. He picked up a cheap French novel by Paul de Kock, two copies of
La Vie Parisienne
, a Jewish illustrated weekly. He smiled as he turned the pages. He put them down and picked up two books:
Christmas Stories
by Charles Dickens, and
Hereward the Wake
. Judging by their whorled surface, there could be no doubt that Mrs. Anna Ragner had read them, and read them thoroughly. Mr. Corkran was very much surprised indeed. There were some old envelopes lying at his hand. One was marked, ‘Bank of England. Private.' The other had a foreign stamp on it, and Mr. Corkran flicked it back upon the table in an attitude of extreme disgust. The curtains on the window were dirty. ‘That's funny,' thought Mr. Corkran. ‘She's never asked for them to be washed.'

He stood up and surveyed the room from floor to ceiling. What was there about the room that made the factotum stand there, hand to his mouth, exclaiming to himself, ‘You'd never think Anna Ragner had ever been there.' Anna Ragner indeed must be two persons in one. For this room breathed nothing but a sort of delicious feminine fragrance. It certainly did not breathe the power which Mr. Corkran knew she possessed. It was as though she flung off this power before she entered the room. It was a woman's room. But it didn't seem quite right to the factotum. Apart from that single envelope marked, ‘Bank of England. Private,' there was not a single thread of evidence of what she really was.

‘It doesn't look like a moneylender's room at all. Well, she can't hide away from me very much longer. If she thinks she is as powerful as all that, she's wrong, for by sheer slavery I've sucked it out of her. No, Anna! You and I must learn now, once and for all, how well we understand each other. But the way she looked at me when I showed that person out of the house last night, I thought she was going to devour me.'

He was still standing there when the telephone rang again, and ‘I wonder if she's made up her mind?' he said to himself as he hurried down to the hall. He put his ear to the telephone, and spoke softly over the wire.

‘Hello! Corkran speaking.'

‘I have thought over this matter of the woman in Hatfields. I think you might go down there and suggest a renewal of the loan, but don't press the matter. You might, however—and I think it would be wise to do so—you might take a look over things, and bring me back a proper return of ingoing wages. Well, you tell Mrs. Fury that I must repeat what I said in my note: that I'm very much surprised that I was not notified of her husband's change of employment.'

‘I had already thought of that, mam,' replied Mr. Corkran.

He heard a laugh at the other end of the line. ‘Yes, yes, but I cannot always be praising you for your foresight, Corkran. I shall return at six o'clock.'

‘Very well, mam,' but there was only a metallic thump in the man's ear as the woman put down the receiver.

‘Well, that's much better,' said Mr. Corkran. ‘Now we know where we are. I thought for a moment she'd gone pure winneck over that Fury loan,' and he hurried upstairs to change. He drew off his dirty dungaree trousers, and put on his black ones. In a few minutes he was ready, completely dressed in black, wearing a newly starched linen collar and blue tie. He went down into the kitchen, carrying his hard hat and a clothes-brush. After a vigorous brushing of the hat, he once more applied vaseline to his hair, in order to keep the quiff in place. Then he trimmed his moustaches, first stroking some pomade into them. Having satisfied himself as to externals, he now thought of internals. Mr. Corkran never went out on business without fortifying himself with a hot toddy, no matter what season of the year it was. Hot rum-and-milk was a good foundation, and there was delicate work ahead.

‘Sometimes I wonder if she realizes how her clientele has increased only through me. I wonder.'

He lighted a thin cheroot, and went out to see that all bars, bolts, and chains were affixed. These had never been disturbed, for the three back doors had never once been opened in all the years that Mr. Corkran had lived there. Mrs. Ragner and he always used the front door. It showed at least that they considered their calling and place in the world as honourable as the next-door neighbour.

‘It's the clients that hang their heads, not us,' he once remarked to Mrs. Ragner, and she had replied, ‘Yes. One would think we dispensed poison instead of money.'

He went from room to room inspecting the windows, saw the various drawers were locked. Then he went into the hall. All now seemed secure. He should probably be back about four—barring events, of course. There were always events. Then he opened the big front door, and shutting it with a terrific bang he surveyed it, vigorously rattled the knob, and, satisfied that everything was in order, sauntered down the steps.

‘What a glorious day it is!' he said to himself, smiling approval at the sun, at which he flung a furtive eye, as though at any moment it were threatening to fall on him, and continued on his way until he reached the stretch of road which he looked upon as his promenade, when he came to a halt and gazed steadily at the many windows of the pickle factory, some open, some shut, at which he could see girls working. It was one of Mr. Corkran's pleasures in life to stand here on every occasion on which he left the house, and focus an approving eye upon the many female forms, either behind the closed window or in front of the open ones.

After a few minutes he went on. Like the girls in the factory, the world that spread out before him was there for him to see, and the long journey downhill into Instone Road was occupied in pursuing these usual pleasures, which ranged from standing looking into shop windows to staring at workmen pulling up the road, or at the soft whiteness of a child's leg. Stout women, too, were a source of pleasure to him, whether by reason of the general cheeriness or good-humour one associates with stoutness, or from purely sexual pleasure at beholding such large-breasted females, Mr. Corkran did not exactly know, but he never passed a stout lady or a stout girl without feasting his eyes upon her.

He reached the end of Instone Road, and stood for a few minutes watching the stream of traffic roll by; the people who flooded the pavements; the children who played on the green benches that were standing outside the tram station. He turned left and into the King's Road.

There was not far to go now, and there was plenty of time. He looked up at the tramway clock, and thought, ‘I'll sit down for a bit. It's rather nice in the air.' But before five minutes had passed he was again on his way. The air didn't suit him, after all. He wasn't used to it. The air in the kitchen at Banfield Road was much more suitable. He increased his pace until he reached Gorbal Street, when he stopped to watch a dog-fight.

Mr. Corkran, indeed, was slowly forming a belief that he felt ever so much more cheerful, even more optimistic, about things after dark. Perhaps he was the creature of the half-darkness, for now he put his hand to his head and said, ‘What a rotten headache!' The everlasting twilight of Banfield Road was the only world for him.

And here was Hatfields. He put his hand to his hat to see if it was sitting comely, glanced down at his black suit and, brushing a white thread from his trouser-leg, said aloud, ‘Right-oh!' Then he gave three long, loud raps upon the knocker of number three Hatfields. He was all attention now. There was no reply. He put his hand to the knocker a second time, held it away from its base for a second or two, and then crashed it down as hard as he could. This he repeated five times. The blows upon this iron knocker re-echoed at the other end of Hatfields. When one or two doors opened further up the street, a smile appeared upon Mr. Corkran's face. Well, he hadn't lost his technique, anyhow, and it was absolutely in accordance with his calling that he should announce his arrival in so dramatic a fashion. Somehow, however, it sounded much better at night-time. He heard a voice say, ‘Coming.' Then the door opened.

‘Good-afternoon,' announced Mr. Corkran, at the same time thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, and by a pert lift of the head revealing his acknowledgment of Mrs. Fury's presence. He had addressed his ‘Good-afternoon' to the doorstep, but those curious eyes of his that made him look as though he were yet half-asleep had suddenly opened wide and as quickly narrowed themselves again. They seemed to say, ‘You are here. That is good.' Then he put one foot on the step.

When the woman said, ‘But who are you?' an almost pained expression appeared upon the man's face.

‘I'm surprised you did not know me, Mrs. Fury,' he said. ‘I am from Banfield Road.'

‘Oh! I see—but I—I mean I wasn't expecting you,' a remark that made the gentleman laugh and later remark, ‘But Mrs. Ragner never has sent out a note of any kind to say she was coming, or I was coming. Our stationery expenses are heavy enough as it is, and also'—he had now put his foot in the lobby—‘and also we should consider it beneath our dignity to send such notes. May I come in?'

Mrs. Fury drew back into the lobby. There seemed nothing else for it but that he must come in, and at once. Already the Postlethwaites' door had opened.

‘Thank you,' said Mr. Corkran. ‘Thank you,' and walked behind Mrs. Fury into the kitchen. He sat down on the edge of the sofa and made a rapid survey with a very experienced eye of the contents of the Fury kitchen.

Mrs. Fury shut the kitchen door, then she stood in front of the fire, her hands smothered in her apron, which she held to her breast. She was afraid of this man. His face disgusted her. It was sly, thin, pasty-looking. It seemed that such a face asked for a fist, a powerful fist, to crush it to pulp.

‘What have you come about? The loan?'

She turned her head away as though afraid of the answer, which she knew was inevitable. She dropped the apron as she heard Mr. Corkran say, ‘Precisely, Mrs. Fury, precisely. Mrs. Ragner asked me to call, so I've called. We've been rather worried about you lately—I mean, your account,' he corrected himself quickly. ‘The loan, you see. It's in a very bad state. We were looking at the books last night. Naturally, as we had no answer to our note'—Mr. Corkran always said ‘our,' having regard for the silent part played in the operation of the Ragner machinery—‘and considering also that on two occasions you have failed to call and see her—well, to put things in a nutshell—we decided to give you a call.'

Having delivered himself of what constituted both a revelation and an ultimatum, he removed his hard hat and placed it delicately on the edge of the dresser. Then his hand went to his head to see if the quiff was still in position.

The woman standing on the home-made mat now raised her eyes and looked once more at Mr. Corkran. It was no more than a glimpse, for she immediately lowered them again. It seemed that the man had a head, but now, without the hat, it seemed less of a head than ever. In fact, it looked as if some giant hand had pressed both head and face backwards. Mr. Corkran looked as though he were ever in the act of retreating.

‘Well,' he said. Then he crossed his legs, cupped his hands round his knees, and once again subjected the woman to that scrutinizing gaze. Yet he seemed to be only half looking at her. ‘Well! We're rather anxious to know whether you intend to do anything in the matter.'

At this remark, Mrs. Fury drew a chair to the table and sat down. She faced the man, holding him with her eyes.

‘And there's another thing,' continued Mr. Corkran, ‘we have now learned that your husband is at sea. We were not told of this. Surely you must have read our agreement. It is incumbent upon the borrower to advise us immediately there is any development that makes necessary a rearrangement of the promissory form. If you look at that carefully—perhaps you haven't looked at it,' he said smilingly, ‘if you look, you'll see that it is necessary not only to acquaint us with any change of address, but of any change of employment—or alteration of family. We have to protect ourselves, Mrs. Fury. We can't afford to take risks of any kind, and I repeat that our one aim is to satisfy and do our best by our clients. Come now, why have these payments fallen off? We overlooked a period when your husband was on strike, but that's a year ago. It is true that we have drawn—I believe Mrs. Ragner did so last Monday—it is true that you cleared the interest and some of the principal on the second loan, but there remains an outstanding account which comprises interest on the second and third loan, and principal on the second. It is true you have cleared this as best you could. We appreciate that, and we are not slow to appreciate it, Mrs. Fury, but at the same time you will bear in mind that interest is increasing on the third loan, and only five pounds of the principal has been paid off. I may say that if we had wished we might have retained the full thirty-five pounds compensation money which came to your son—but you see we did not do that. As I say, we are fair to clients. We kept the thirty pounds only. The firm was good to you. I say again, we appreciate your efforts. There is now due something like thirty-seven pounds on your second loan. I think it's thirty-seven. It may be more or it may be less. According to Mrs. Ragner's calculations, it works out at sixty pounds odd. Naturally, the interest is rising as the payments slacken. You see, if you had come to us as we asked——'