The Suburbs of Hell (3 page)

Paul stared at the tattoo. ‘You’re full of surprises, Harry,’ he said. ‘What if it’s me? Perhaps I was left on the doorstep of the bourgeois Ramseys.’

‘Could be, for all I know,’ Harry said. ‘I never sin him. She wouldn’t let me. He’d be about twenty-five now.’

‘Not me, then. I’m thirty-one.’

‘Are you? Blokes with beards, you just can’t tell.’

He looked at the beard with such candid affection that the younger man sheepishly smiled at him.

‘Do you know what I think about your face?’ Harry asked. ‘I think if I met you in the middle of the Go-By Desert, I should say: “Scoose me, boy, int you a Morris-dancer?”’

Paul spluttered into his beer. ‘If that had come from any other man,’ he said, ‘I’d call him a bitch.’

Harry merely beamed at him, and shook his head. After a pull at his pint he asked, grave now: ‘Are you comfortable in that old house of yours?’

‘All right, thanks,’ Paul said, sounding cagey.

‘Thass something big. Draughty, I should think. Draughty as arseholes.’

‘It’s not too bad. Of course, it’s not—we were going to take years to get it civilized. That’s rather come to a stop.’

‘Thass sad. Still, that happen.’

‘I get the impression,’ Paul said, ‘that it’s happened a lot in Old Tornwich. I’ve never seen so many deserted husbands and lifelong bachelors. I ask myself whether all these little pubs are cause or effect.’

‘I think thass the sea,’ Harry said. ‘Seamen’s marriages are often a bit dodgy, like.’

‘I put so much into that old wreck of a house,’ Paul said, and frowned down at a beermat which he was twisting between his fingers. ‘I thought about it all the time. I suppose I thought that we both thought that was the most important thing about us: that one day we’d sit in our Georgian house that I’d bought for a song and entertain our slightly Bohemian, mostly schoolteaching friends. When she was in the process of being swept off her feet by a real Bohemian, I didn’t even notice.’

‘She might come back, mightn’t she?’

‘No,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t think that affair is likely to last, but she won’t move backwards now.’

‘Well, listen, Paul—’

Paul’s eyes, looking up at him, were grey-blue and rather blank, or guarded. ‘What?’

‘Well, I mean to say, don’t be lonely, you know—’

‘No, I’m not going to be. I think Greg is probably coming to live here for a while.’

‘Greg? Oh, the little brother. The stoodent.’

‘Not a student now. Another unemployable Ph.D.’

‘Whass that—Ph.D?’

‘Doctor of Philosophy.’

‘Ah, you’re pullin my pisser,’ Harry exclaimed. ‘That skinny scruff with the guitar, you call him doctor?’

‘I call him Skinny Scruff,’ Paul said. ‘So can you.’

‘Well, they’re rum places, these universities,’ said Harry. ‘But thass nice for you. I don’t see that much of my own brothers, but we’re pals when we meet. I should say for myself that I’m quite good at bein a brother.’

‘I expect you are, Harry,’ Paul said, with a straight face. ‘If I met you in the Gobi Desert, that’s what I’d guess about you.’

‘Now you
are
pullin it,’ Harry detected.

The big room, created not many years before from small ones which had been secretive and snug, was crowded and smoky by now, and conversations from many directions mingled in a throbbing hum like a ship’s engine. The small dog was again navigating the legs with a lost look. ‘Why,’ said Harry, sitting with spraddled legs in his captain’s chair and reviewing his fellow-citizens like a fleet, ‘I believe thass Ena’s dog, that.’

‘You know everything,’ Paul said. ‘That reminds me: could you give Greg and me some advice about a boat?’

‘To buy, you mean? Well, I know something, not a lot. But I can tell you who
not
to buy boats from. The hooman element, thass where I can always be a help.’

‘Harry—what do you make of Frank?’

‘Why, does he say he have a boat to sell? That can’t be true.’

‘No, nothing to do with boats. It’s just that you put me in mind of people who offer to flog you things.’

Harry considered. ‘I don’t know all that much about him. We was both on the
Hamburg
once—we overlap by a foo months. And he stayed in my top room for a while, part-time, like. But I dint hardly know him then, and I don’t think I do now, not to say
know.
When he get married, he come ashore and start this sort of handyman business: carpenterin and house-paintin and that. What are you tryin to find out? Do you know something against him?’

‘No,’ Paul said, doubtfully: and then: ‘Better drop it. He saw me looking at him. He’s coming over.’

Harry twisted in his chair and looked over his shoulder at Frank approaching. ‘Come to join us, mate?’

‘No, I’m off,’ Frank said. ‘I just remembered something. You’re invited to a party, at Dave’s.’

‘At Dave’s?’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know where Dave live.’

‘It’s twenty-three High Street,’ Frank said. ‘A bit after eleven. Bring a bird, if you know one, and enough to drink for yourselves.’

‘Well, I might,’ Harry said. ‘Shall I ask Ena? She always like a party, but I don’t think a party of Dave’s would be up her street.’

‘Bring her,’ Frank said, beginning to drift away. ‘You’re invited too,’ he added to Paul, and then pushed his way through the crowd to the door.

‘Well,’ Harry said to Paul, ‘shall you come?’

‘I don’t think so. If Ena goes, I might.’

‘I know whass in Dave’s mind,’ Harry said, ‘invitin us Old Age Pensioners. He reckons we shall get discouraged before we empty the bottles we bring. Stone me, boy, int you never gooin to finish that? What are you doin, spittin into it to make that last?’

‘Just a half,’ Paul said, handing over his pint. ‘Harry, do you
like
Frank?’

Harry, standing with a pot in each hand, gave the matter his attention. He said: ‘Thass not a question I often ask myself. I like most people till they teach me different. Far as I’m concerned, the whole hooman race is on probation. Nice to see you smile, boy.’

‘Prat,’ said Paul. ‘Soppy prat.’

At the end of the quay the mist was thrumming with the engines of the unseen
St Felix
, and the streetlamps, reduced to dandelion-balls of light, made islands to be crossed by the dark sudden figures of men going home from the dozen pubs of the little town.

‘I always think,’ said Ena, tripping along in her court shoes with her King Charles spaniel behind her, ‘they could make a spooky film in Old Tornwich when it’s foggy.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Paul said, cheered up by the thought. ‘Nineteen-forties. Black and white. With—’

‘Basil Rathbone,’ Ena suggested. ‘Lon Chaney.’

‘I was thinking of Jean Gabin.’

‘Oh, foreign,’ Ena said. ‘Yes, and Valli.’

‘Boris Karloff,’ Harry contributed. ‘Bela Lugosi.’

‘I think we were being more subtle,’ said Paul.

‘There’s a monster about tonight,’ Harry said, taking no offence. ‘Young Killer—Jimmy Rigg—see him in the next street. Some bloke in a joke-shop mask, with them hands—you know? The sight of that in the mist redooce Killer to a twelve-year-old boy.’

‘Someone rehearsing for the Carnival,’ Ena said. ‘What was the number of the house, Harry?’

Harry wrinkled his brow, and gave it up. ‘I forget. Do you remember, Paul?’

‘I didn’t hear him.’

‘I should have known better,’ sighed Ena.

‘No,’ protested Harry, ‘we shall find it. If we wait, we shall see other people arrivin.’ He came to a stop under a streetlamp, bottles cradled in his arms. ‘Just you have patience, Ena.’

‘It’s not very warm,’ Ena pointed out. She picked up her small dog and swept it to her bosom, and they nuzzled one another. ‘Choochy features. Oh, she’s shivering.’

Paul said: ‘Do you think Frank was having a little joke? That there isn’t a party?’

‘No, I don’t think,’ Harry said shortly. ‘Bloody hell, boy, he’s a bit older than ten.’

‘Here’s a taxi slowing down,’ said Ena. ‘It must be near here.’

The taxi came to a stop by the light, but no door opened. After a moment a voice called from its darkness: ‘Harry—you lost?’

‘Whass that you, Sam?’ Harry called back, and leaned in at the passenger window. ‘We’re lookin for a party, but thass hidin. Do you know where that is?’

After a pause for thought, the voice replied: ‘No, but I know where there
is
a party. In New Tornwich. I’ll take you there.’

‘We can’t do that,’ Ena objected. ‘Gatecrashing parties at our age—don’t talk so daft, Sam.’

‘That’s all right,’ promised the invisible driver. ‘That’s okay. She told me to bring people to her party. It’s a girl I know what’s celebratin her birthday, on the spur of the moment, like.’

‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Ena. ‘I wonder if she’s got the police out scouting for her as well.’

‘Is this sort of thing common in Tornwich?’Paul wondered.

‘That’s not
un
common,’ said the voice of Sam.

Harry made a decision and, opening a rear door, stood waiting. ‘Come on, Ena. If we don’t fancy it, Sam will drive us straight home.’

‘Oh well,’ said Ena, ‘why not?’ She clutched her dog close and climbed into the car, Harry crowding behind her.

No one was listening to Paul excusing himself from the unknown girl’s party, and after a moment he surrendered and got in beside the driver. He was surprised to find that Sam, who had the voice of a native of Ipswich, was a young black man. They nodded to one another, and Sam set off.

Once past Ena’s lighthouse they were in the Victorian sprawl of New Tornwich, but the mist, stained by the crude lights of the main road, had made the houses retreat and become country hedgerows. Soon the taxi turned and crossed a railway line, and pulled up before a row of working-men’s cottages of clammy red brick, where an open front door spilled light and disco music.

As the passengers were getting out, a blonde girl in jeans emerged from the house. ‘Who have you brought me, Sam?’ she called. ‘Why,
Harry
!’ She ran forward and was clasped to the black leather jacket with its perfume of good contraband tobacco.

‘Donna,’ Ena exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know it was
your
party. Happy birthday, love, give us a kiss.’

While the women embraced, Paul edged nearer to Harry. ‘I don’t think I’ll come in,’ he muttered. ‘Not in the mood. Anyway, I’m expecting a phone call from Greg about midnight, I’d forgotten that.’

‘Who is
he
?’ Donna asked, discovering Paul. ‘He looks nice.’

‘He’s a very nice boy,’ Harry said, ‘(Paul–Donna), but he have to goo to bed early, so Sam’s takin him home.’ And while the women cajoled and Paul hedged, he opened the passenger door and slipped a half-bottle of whisky on to the seat, with a finger to his lips for Sam’s benefit.

‘Where does he live?’ Sam asked.

‘In Watergate. Fred Heath’s old house. He’s doin a lot of work on that.’

‘He
bought
it?’ Sam marvelled. ‘Bloody hell. Even if I was a squatter, I should think twice about livin in that place.’

‘Thass goonna be most desirable,’ Harry said, ‘if the poor lad don’t lose heart.’

He reached out a black leather arm to Paul, who had come near, and crushed him to his side. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘won’t you. Now, look, there’s a little bottle there, and you’ve to take that hoom with you. Ena and me int goonna spend long with these youngsters. We might come round to yours for a nightcap.’

‘Right,’ Paul said. ‘Fine.’

‘So don’t you sit broodin. Your friends are on the way.’ He held the slighter man for a moment in a bearhug, then pushed him into the taxi and slammed the door.

‘You’re crazy,’ Paul said, laughing, looking up at him. ‘You kissed me.’

‘Did I?’ said Harry. ‘Well, worse things happen at sea. Look at him, Sam, don’t he look like Don Quixotey when he smile?’

The taxi drew away, its tail-lights faded to ash in the mist. Broad-shouldered Harry turned and made his way, massive in the bright doorway, to the party.

Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill:
As, kill a man, or else devise his death…

Aaron in
Titus Andronicus

The cellars are swept and whitewashed, cleansed of history. A setting that seems to call for casks and hogsheads and bales contains only the bland lumber of middle-class young people in their marriage’s first scene.

The stairs creak. On the ground floor he has installed a fitted kitchen, very new, very shiny, nowadays not so clean. In the big dining-room with two windows on the street he has restored the old panelling and hung insignificant paintings, some of forebears of his own who could not afford to be painted well.

The staircase from there is of solid oak, carpeted, and does not give. On the first floor the door of his dark bedroom is ajar, but the sitting-room door, with light showing below it, is closed on the sound of the World Service News.

The stairs to the floor above are bare, and squeak. The rooms here are large, dingy, untouched; the windows are dusty. Nothing is here but the litter of his nest-building, rolls of wallpaper, tins of paint.

The one closed door below fits badly but has well-oiled hinges. He hears nothing through the News.

He sits listening, sprawled in a chair with his legs out, his head back, his eyes on the ceiling. He lifts a hand and sips from a glass. On a table behind him, near the window, stand the telephone and the lamp which is the only light. He waits for the telephone to ring.

In this room is much of his past, in the form for the most part of books, prints, records. It is the room of a student with money, a student grown a little older. He has not had an eventful life.

He has sat in this chair (crouched, rather) with his head in his hands, many a night. One night he took out of its case an old cut-throat razor with a bone handle, and stared at it.

But now he is calm; now he smiles at a recent memory. He waits for the telephone to ring.

And now I am inside; I know everything.

A movement, a sound, drags him back from his thoughts to the room. His eyes widen, he starts upright in the chair. He looks, through the narrow crack of the doorway, into my face, which he cannot see.