by Muriel Spark
Godfrey reached his car outside the bomb site. He had felt cramped when he rose from that frightful modern chair of Olive’s. One had talked on, and remained longer than one had intended. He climbed stiffly into the car and slammed the door, suddenly reproached by the more dignified personality he now had to resume.
Why does one behave like this, why? he asked himself as he drove into King’s Road and along it. Why does one do these things? he thought, never defining, however, exactly what things. How did it start, at what point in one’s life does one find oneself doing things like this? And he felt resentful against Charmian who had been, all her life with him, regarded by everyone as the angelic partner endowed with sensibility and refined tastes. As for oneself, of Colston’s Breweries, one had been the crude fellow, tolerated for her sake, and thus driven into carnality, as it were. He felt resentful against Charmian, and raced home to see if she had made everything all right after upsetting Mrs. Anthony and Mrs. Pettigrew. He took out his watch. It was seven and a half minutes to six. Home, home, for a drink. Funny how Olive never seemed to have any drinks in her flat. Couldn’t afford it, she said. Funny she couldn’t afford it; what did she do with her money, one wondered.
At half-past six Alec Warner arrived at Olive’s. She poured him a gin and tonic which he placed on a table beside his chair. He took a hard-covered notebook from his briefcase. “How are things?” he said, leaning his large white head against the yellow chair-back.
“Guy Leet,” she said, “has been diagnosed again for his neck. It’s a rare type of rheumatism, it sounds like tortoise.”
“Torticollis?” said Alec Warner.
“That’s it.”
Alec Warner made a note in his book. “Trust him,” he said, “to have a rare rheumatism. How are things otherwise?”
“Dame Lettie Colston has changed her will again.”
“Lovely,” he said, and made a note. “What way has she changed it?”
“Eric is out again, for one. Martin is put in again. That’s the other nephew in Africa.”
“She thinks Eric is responsible for the telephone calls, does she?”
“She suspects everyone. Goodness. This is her way of testing Eric. That ex-detective is out.”
“Chief Inspector Mortimer?”
“Yes. She thinks it might be him. Funny, it is. She has no sooner got him working privately on the case, than she thinks it might be him.”
“How old is Mortimer?” he asked.
“Nearly seventy.”
“I know. But when exactly will he be seventy? Did you enquire?”
“I’ll find out exactly,” said Olive.
“Always find out exactly,” he said.
“I think,” said Olive, defending her lapse as best she could, “he’ll be seventy quite soon—early next year, I think.”
“Find out exactly, dear,” said Warner. “Meantime he is not one of us. We’ll come to him next year.”
“She thinks you may be the culprit,” said Olive. “Are you?”
“I doubt it,” he said wearily. He had received a letter from Dame Lettie asking the same question.
“How you talk,” she said. “Well, I wouldn’t have put it past you.”
“Mrs. Anthony,” she said, “had a row with Mrs. Pettigrew this morning and is threatening to leave. Charmian accused Mrs. Pettigrew of trying to poison her.”
“That’s very hot news,” he said. “Godfrey has been here to-day, I gather?”
“Oh yes. He was rather odd to-day. Something’s put him off his stroke.”
“Not interested in garters to-day?”
“No, but he was trying hard. He said his doctor doesn’t want him to go out and about so much. I didn’t know whether to take that as a hint, or—”
“Mrs. Pettigrew—have you thought of her?”
“Oh goodness,” said Olive, “I haven’t.” She smiled widely and placed a hand over her mouth.
“Try to find out,” he said.
“Oh dear,” said Olive, “no more fivers for poor old Eric. I can see it coming. Do you think Mrs. Pettigrew has it in her?”
“I do,” said Alec, writing his notes.
“There’s a bit in the paper in the kitchen,” said Olive, “about a preacher preaching on his hundredth birthday.”
“What paper?”
“The Mirror.”
“My press-cutting agency covers the Mirror. It’s only the out-of-the-way papers they sometimes overlook. But thanks all the same. Always tell me of anything like that, just in case. Keep on the look out.”
“O.K.,” said Olive, and sipped her drink, watching the old veined hand moving its pen steadily, in tiny writing, over the page.
He looked up. “How frequently would you say,” he said, “he passes water?”
“Oh goodness, it didn’t say anything about that in the Mirror.”
“You know I mean Godfrey Colston.”
“Well, he was here about two hours and he went twice. Of course he had two cups of tea.”
“Is twice the average when he comes here?”
“I can’t remember. I think—”
“You must try to remember everything exactly, my dear,” said Alec. “You must watch, my dear, and pray. It is the only way to be a scholar, to watch and to pray.”
“Me a scholar, goodness. He had patches of red on the cheekbones to-day, more so than usual.”
“Thank you,” said Alec, and made a note. “Notice everything, Olive,” he looked up and said, “for only you can observe him in relation to yourself. When I meet him, you understand, he is a different personality.”
“I’ll bet,” she said, and laughed.
He did not laugh. “Be sure to find out all you can on his next visit in case he deserts you for Mrs. Pettigrew. When do you expect to see him again?”
“Friday, I suppose.”
“There is someone,” he said, “tapping at the window behind me.”
“Is there? It must be Granpa, he always does that.” She rose to go to the door.
Alec said quickly, “Tell me, does he tap on the window of his own accord or have you asked him to announce himself in that way?”
“He does it of his own accord. He always has tapped at the window.”
“Why? Do you know?”
“No—no idea.”
Alec bent once more with his pen over his book, and recorded the facts which he would later analyse down to their last, stubborn elements.
Olive fetched in Percy Mannering who, on entering the room, addressed Alec Warner without preliminaries, waving in front of him a monthly magazine of a literary nature, on the cover of which was stamped in bold lettering, “Kensington Public Libraries.”
“Guy Leet,” roared Percy, “that moron has published part of his memoirs in which he refers to Ernest Dowson as ‘that weak-kneed wailer of Gallic weariness afflicted with an all-too-agonised afflatus.’ He is fantastically wrong about Dowson. Ernest Dowson was the spiritual and aesthetic child of Swinburne, Tennyson and Verlaine. You can hear all their voices and Dowson was something of a French scholar and quite obviously under the spell of Verlaine as well as Tennyson and Swinburne, and very much in Arthur Symons’ circle. He is fantastically wrong about Ernest Dowson.”
“How are you keeping?” said Alec, having risen from his chair.
“Guy Leet was never a good theatre critic, and he was a worse novel critic. He knows nothing about poetry, he has no right to touch the subject. Can’t someone stop him?”
“What else,” said Alec, “does he say in his memoir?”
“A lot of superficiality about how he attacked a novel of Henry James’s and then met James outside the Athenæum one day and James was talking about his conscience as an artist and Guy’s conscience as a critic, and that whatever was actually committed to print—”
“Let the fire see the people, Granpa,” said Olive, for Percy was standing back-to-fire straddling and monopolising it. Alec Warner had closed and put away his notebook.
> The poet did not move.
“That’s because Henry James is fashionable to-day, that’s why he writes about Henry James. Whereas he jeers at poor Ernest—If you’re pouring that brandy for me, Olive, it’s too much. Half of that—Ernest Dowson, a supreme lyricist.” He took the glass, which he held with a shaky claw-like hand, and while taking his first sip seemed of a sudden to forget Ernest Dowson.
He said to Alec, “I didn’t see you at Lisa’s funeral.”
“Sit down, Granpa,” said Olive. She worked him into a chair.
“I missed it,” said Alec, watching Percy’s lean profile with concentration. “I was in Folkestone at the time.”
“It was a fearful and thrilling experience,” said Percy.
“In what way?” said Alec.
The old poet smiled. He cackled from the depth of his throat, and the memory of Lisa’s cremation seemed to be refracted from his mind’s eye to the avid eyes in his head. As he talked, the eyes of Alec feasted on him, in turn.
Percy stayed on with his grand-daughter after Alec Warner had left. She prepared a supper of mushrooms and bacon which they ate off trays perched on their knees. She watched him while he ate. He gnawed with his few teeth at the toasted bread, but got through all of it, even the difficult crusts.
He looked up as he managed the last small rim of crust and saw her watching him. When he had finished all, he remarked, “Final perseverance.”
“What you say, Granpa?”
“Final perseverance is the doctrine that wins the eternal victory in small things as in great.”
“I say, Granpa, did you ever read any books by Charmian Piper?”
“Oh rather, we all knew her books. She was a fine-looking woman. You should have heard her read poetry from a platform in the days of Poetry. Harold Munro always said—”
“Her son, Eric, has told me there’s talk of her novels being reprinted. There’s a revival of interest in her novels. There’s been an article written, Eric says. But he says the novels all consist of people saying ‘touché’ to each other, and it’s all an affectation, the revival of interest, just because his mother is so old and still alive and was famous once.”
“She’s still famous. Always has been. Your trouble is, you know nothing, Olive. Everyone knows Charmian Piper.”
“Oh no they don’t. No one’s heard of her except a few old people, but there’s going to be a revival. I say there’s been an article—”
“You know nothing about literature.”
“Touché” she snapped, for Percy himself was always pretending that nobody had forgotten his poetry, really. Then she gave him three pounds to make up for her cruelty, which in fact he had not noticed; he simply did not acknowledge the idea of revival in either case, since he did not recognise the interim death. However, he took the three pounds from Olive, of whose side-line activities he was unaware, for, besides having small private means from her mother’s side, she also had occasional jobs as an actress on the B.B.C.
He carried the money by bus and underground to Leicester Square where the post office was open all night, and wrote out, on several telegraph forms, in large slow capitals, a wire to Guy Leet, The Old Stable, Stedrost, Surrey: “You are fantastically wrong in your reference to Ernest Dowson that exceedingly poignant poet who only just steered clear of sentimentality and self-pity stop Ernest Dowson was the spiritual and aesthetic child of Swinburne Tennyson and especially Verlaine by whose verse he was veritably haunted Dowsons verse requires to be read aloud which is more than most verse by later hands can stand up to stop I cried for madder music and for stronger wine new line but when the feast is finished and the lamps expire new line then falls thy shadow. Cynara the night is thine new line and I am desolate and sick of an old passion etcetera stop read it aloud man your cheap alliterative jibe carries no weight you are fantastically wrong—Percy Mannering.”
He handed in the sheaf of forms at the counter. The clerk looked closely at Percy, whereupon Percy made visible the three pound notes.
“Are you sure,” said the clerk then, “you want to send all this?”
“I am,” bawled Percy Mannering. He handed over two of the notes, took his change and went out into the bright-lit night.
Chapter Eight
Dame Lettie Colston had been happier without a resident maid, but the telephone incidents had now forced on her the necessity of having someone in the house to answer the dreadful calls. The mystery of it was, that the man never gave the terrible message to the girl. On the other hand, in the two weeks since her arrival, there had been a series of calls which proved to be someone getting the wrong number. When they had occurred three times in one day Dame Lettie began to bewilder the girl with questions.
“Who was it, Gwen, was it a man?”
“It was a wrong number.”
“Was it a man?”
“Yes, but it was a wrong number.”
“What did he say exactly? Do answer my question please.”
“He said, ‘Sorry, it’s a wrong number,’” shouted Gwen, “that’s what he said.”
“What kind of voice was it?”
“Oh mad-um. I said it was a man, didn’t I? The lines must be crossed. I know phones like the back of my hand.”
“Yes, but was the voice young or old? Was it the same one as got the last wrong number?”
“Well, they’re all the same to me, if they’re wrong numbers. You better answer the phone yourself and then—”
“I was only asking,” said Dame Lettie, “because we seem to be having such a lot of wrong numbers since you’ve been here. And it always seems to be a man.”
“What you mean? What exactly you mean by that, mad-um?”
Dame Lettie had not meant whatever the girl thought she meant. It was Gwen’s evening out, and Lettie was glad Godfrey was coming to dine with her.
At about eight o’clock, when they were at dinner, the telephone rang.
“Godfrey, you answer it please.”
He marched out into the hall. She heard him lift the receiver and give the number. “Yes, that’s right,” he said next. “Who’s that, who is it?” Lettie heard him say. Then he replaced the receiver.
“Godfrey,” she said, “that was the man?”
“Yes,” he shouted. “‘Tell Dame Lettie to remember she must die.’ Then he rang off. Damned peculiar.” He sat down and continued eating his soup.
“There is no need to shout, Godfrey. Keep calm.” Her own large body was trembling.
“Well, it’s damned odd. I say you must have an enemy. Sounds a common little fellow, with his lisp.”
“Oh no, Godfrey, he is quite cultured. But sinister.”
“I say he’s a common chap. This isn’t the first time I’ve heard him.”
“There must be something wrong with your hearing, Godfrey. A middle-aged, cultivated man who should know better—”
“A barrow boy, I should say.”
“Nonsense. Go and ring the police. They said always to report—”
“What’s the use?” he said. And seeing she would argue, he added, “After dinner. I’ll ring after dinner.”
“That is the first time he has left that message since I took on Gwen a fortnight ago. When Gwen answers the telephone the man says, ‘Sorry, wrong number.’ He does it two or three times a day.”
“It may be some fellow getting a wrong number. Your lines must be crossed with someone else’s. Have you reported this nuisance to the Exchange?”
“I have,” she said. “They tell me the lines are perfectly in order.”
“They must be crossed—”
“Oh,” she said, “you are as bad as Gwen, going on about crossed lines. I have a good idea who it is. I think it is Chief Inspector Mortimer.”
“Nothing like Mortimer’s voice.”
“Or his accomplice,” she said.
“Rubbish. A man in his position.”
“That is why the police don’t find the culprit. They know, but they won’t reveal
his identity. He is their former Chief.”
“I say you have an enemy.”
“I say it is Mortimer.”
“Why, then,” said Godfrey, “do you continue to consult him about the case?”
“So that he shall not know I suspect him. He may then fall into a trap. Meantime, as I have told you, he is out of my will. He doesn’t know that.”
“Oh, you are always changing your will. No wonder you have enemies.” Godfrey felt guilty at having gossiped to Olive about Lettie’s changes in her will. “No wonder,” he said, “you don’t know the culprit.”
“I haven’t heard from Eric lately,” Dame Lettie remarked, so that he felt more guilty, thinking of all he had told Olive.
Godfrey said, “He has been in London the past six weeks. He returned to Cornwall last night.”
“But he hasn’t been to see me. Why didn’t you let me know before, Godfrey?”
“I myself did not know he was in London,” said Godfrey, “until I learned it from a mutual friend yesterday.”
“What mutual friend? What has Eric been up to? What friend?”
“I cannot recollect at the moment,” said Godfrey. “I have long given up interest in Eric’s affairs.”
“You should keep your memory in training,” she said. “Try going over in your mind each night before retiring everything you have done during the day. I must say I am astonished that Eric did not call upon me.”
“He didn’t come near us,” said Godfrey, “so why should he come to see you?”
“At least,” she said, “I should have thought he knew what side his bread’s buttered.”
“Ha, you don’t know Eric. Fifty-six years of age and an utter failure. You ought to know, Lettie, that men of that age and type can’t bear the sight of old people. It reminds them that they are getting on. Ha, and he’s feeling his age, I hear. You, Lettie, may yet see him under. We may both see him under.”
Lying in bed later that night, it seemed clear to Dame Lettie that Eric must really after all be the man behind the telephone calls. He would not ring himself lest she should recognise his voice. He must have an accomplice. She rose and switched on the light.
