The End of the Web

by George Sims

  As he was swallowing the toad of defeat, which encompassed sexual frustration and a deflated ego, his Trimphone gave its preliminary note. At once he experienced a flicker of fear in case it was another of the subtly sinister anonymous calls: it reminded him vividly of the terrible risk he was taking under the pressure of that chancer, Sidney Chard. They were like men walking through a lions’ den, with the deluding sensation of safety as long as the lions slept.

  ‘Sorry, I’ll have to take it. Might be a friend I was trying to contact this morning.’ He moved his head in the direction of the ringing phone.

  ‘That’s all right. Go ahead.’ Judy gave Leo a teasing kind of smile in which he thought he detected some affection. Had he been saved by the bell from giving up hope with her—was there still a chance of some lovers’ games? He left the room momentarily buoyed up by this thought, but it had deserted him by the time he picked up the phone.

  Once the toy-like receiver was off its stand there was an attention-focusing silence that made him realize this was not going to be an unusually welcome call from Sidney Chard, but another bizarre communication from Mr Anonymous.

  Selver said hello three times in quick succession without any hope of a reasonable response; a fatal sense of curiosity stopped him from replacing the receiver and made him press it closer to his ear, as if that might help in picking up a clue about the mysterious caller.

  On the other end of the line the silence was punctuated at first by the faint sound of breathing, then by the silvery chimes of a clock. The chimes were very much like those of his own old French clock. He was struck by the frightening idea that the telephone lunatic had somehow obtained access to the Welbeck Street Mews flat and made the recording in his own sitting-room. He suddenly shivered as though exposed to a chilling wind instead of midsummer heat. His heart vaulted as a Vox Humana voice read out what sounded like excerpts from references: ‘E should be your middle initial. Yes, E for efficiency. Highly pleased. Oh yes, indeed. Miracle worker! Your plan seems to have worked like a charm. No one else could have tidied the mess…tidied the mess…tidied the mess.’

  As the phrase was repeated mechanically a feeling of panic shot out of Leo Selver like a frightened horse with a kick and a sickening plunge that left him breathless, with a sharp pain in his side. He slammed down the receiver. He had practically forgotten what it was like to be really scared: during the war he had found it difficult to face up to terrors; now it seemed unbearable. He was long-suited on imaginative apprehension and short on guts—just the opposite type to Sidney Chard who appeared to revel in danger. So where was Sid now that he needed him?

  Leo Selver’s mind was a jumble of disconnected thoughts, and he knew that he could not continue immediately with the protracted seduction dialogue, but there was a chance that a pee and a quick wash might work wonders. He turned left instead of right on leaving the bedroom, walked a few paces along the corridor that led to the stairs down to the front door, and quietly locked himself into the bathroom. He turned on the cold tap hard to mask the sound of his peeing.

  A flushed, exhausted face looked out at him from the mirror. ‘No fool like an old fool’; he spoke the cliché in a not quite natural voice, and saluted his mirror image ironically.

  ‘Vivi pericolosamente.’ Standing by the lavatory, Selver remembered Mussolini’s exhortation: ‘Live dangerously’, looked down at his flaccid penis shrivelled by nerves, and laughed silently at himself. It was hard to believe that six months previously he had sometimes felt he might die of boredom because his life was so peaceful and uneventful. Each month then had appeared like the previous one, with only minute variations as to whether they were having dinner with friends or inviting them, making a buying expedition to York instead of Leamington Spa, and attending sales at Christie’s rather than Sotheby’s. All that had been altered in the course of a few days, and he had got the longed-for adventure. It was common enough to wish for a changed existence, but before embarking on dangerous escapades one should consider whether one had the courage to face them out.

  As Selver pulled the chain he said, ‘Yes, go on then, live dangerously!’ in a quiet sneering voice. The fat buffoon Mussolini had provided an admirable tailpiece illustration to his own precept by appearing hung upside-down with Clara Petacci outside a petrol-station in Milan.

  Cool down and calm down, Selver advised himself, filling the basin and splashing his face with cold water till the mirror presented a less hectic visage. He thought of Sidney Chard’s motto, ‘Here goes nothing’, to see if it had any magic left in it, and oddly enough found that he was feeling less panicky. Daredevil Sid would think of some way of dealing with the worrying telephone business.

  The door to the sitting-room was open wider than he had left it and Judy was no longer seated on the couch. Pushing the door right back, he found that the room was empty. The surprise brought back the sharp pain in his side. The silhouette of the standard-lamp blurred against the sun. The room became dark, almost black. It was an effort to make his legs work, as though he were following a dimly remembered pattern of behaviour. He took a few angry, excited steps at seeing a piece of paper propped up on the mantelpiece.

  Dear Incorrigible,

  Had to scoot—chance of a job and jobs are scarce just now! Apologies—and thanks for the delicious lunch and the chatting up and everything! Long day tomorrow slaving in front of hot lights and cameras—I shall be in need of lots of wining and dining! Would you like to call round at my grotty pad in the evening, 8 p.m.? 14 Stephen Street, by the Gresse Buildings, off Tottenham Court Road. I like this quiet flat—and its tenant.

  Not quite yours,

  Judy

  p.s. Shall not wait after 8.15 as I shall be starving!

  The note had been written with Selver’s black felt pen, though her light touch disguised this to a certain extent. Her writing was nervous, sharply pointed, and degenerated into scrawl at the end. He thought: I’ve taken another blow to the ego. Knowing that she ‘had to scoot’, she could not have taken his suggestion about lying down seriously and was just teasing. So much for his seductive powers, so much for the charm of the older man!

  He screwed up the note and threw it into the waste-paper basket, but it was an act of bluff, a mere pretence of independence. Tomorrow pathetic old Leo would be in Stephen Street at 8 p.m. sharp. He could have taken the pretence further and dramatically burnt Judy’s message, as each word was engraved on his brain.

  Walking back to the bedroom, Selver realized that coming face to face with yourself was sometimes an unpleasant experience that did not take place in front of a mirror. As he became older his attempts to seduce girls like Judy would become more and more ludicrous.

  He removed the Trimphone from its stand. The room was comparatively cool, and the clean sheets looked inviting. He sat down on the edge of the bed and took off his shoes and socks slowly like an old man. The pain in his side, which his mother would no doubt have classified as ‘a stitch’, had moved a little and become duller, but he had a sensation of exhaustion as though he had not slept for several nights in a row. He was profoundly weary and a nap was essential before he again tackled the problem of finding Sidney Chard.

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  The alarming ticking of a great clock which seemed to operate within himself awoke Leo Selver from his strange dream about a dead man. He started up in a cold sweat with no sensation of drowsiness, seeing everything about him with stereoscopic clarity, springing out of bed as though it were on fire. There was a panicky fluttering in his pulse, his heart was thudding wildly and had become the centre of the dull pain that had been in his side.

  The vivid dream had been, as Sid would phrase it, ‘of your definitely superior type’, for it had made continuous good sense without a single dip into absurdity, and seemed to enlarge his scanty knowledge of Lord Trewartha whom he had only known by studying old photographs and read
ing press cuttings. In the dream Lord Trewartha, who had been burnt to death at the age of sixty-five, was a young man again, a strong active man with a forceful personality, moving restlessly about his gaunt moorland house, laughing and talking cynically. Trewartha’s conversation had been familiar and convincing, his taut face, leprechaun eyes and richly curved mouth had seemed more real than most dream characters. Equally disturbing and haunting, was the sound just before Selver had woken from the dream, the bleak sound of the wind blowing across the moors, a sound of emptiness at once calamitous and unredeemed.

  The imaginary visit to the lonely moorland house had served to remind Selver that there was an incriminating piece of paper in one of his pockets. After dressing, he searched through all the clothes in his wardrobe. He never used a notebook or diary, but accumulated a collection of scraps of paper and card in his pockets, and these were usually only sorted out when his clothes were sent to be cleaned, and by then he had often forgotten the significance of dates and underlined reminders, and some of the names would be as meaningless as those on old cheque stubs.

  After a few minutes he found the particular scrap he was anxious to destroy, filled with an elaborate doodle, the result of fiddling about with a ballpoint pen while taking a phone-call from Sidney Chard. It was a pattern rather like a spider’s web embellished with tiny faces and pin-men equipped with balancing poles to tightrope walk on some of the linking lines. It also resembled a Snakes and Ladders board, but instead of penalties and short cuts there were the names Cuyp, Molyneux, Everard, Arkadie, Twelve Men’s Moor and Trewartha. At the centre of the web he had written the ominous nickname Court-Card. Beneath the drawing there was a circle with a dot in it, which was interesting psychologically as it was the Boy Scout symbol for ‘I have gone home’.

  Selver burnt the drawing over the sink in his kitchen and flushed down the black fragments with considerable satisfaction, then let the cold water run on his wrists. The fluttering sensation in his pulse had stopped but the pain in his heart remained. He made another mental note to see his doctor, as he had done on half a dozen occasions in the past few months.

  Some other scraps of paper he took into the sitting-room and placed on his blotter for a careful scrutiny. On a restaurant match-folder and on the back of a party invitation he had scribbled the name Buchanan. This name was repeated in red ink with the query Bathwick Mews? on a used envelope. Buchanan was a name that had been much in his mind during recent weeks. He could visualize certain circumstances in which it would be very helpful if he could call on the help of someone as tough as Eddy Buchanan, who had once held an amateur-boxing championship title and looked as strong as a bull. No doubt Sidney Chard considered that he was tough, and probably he had been in 1944, but a fifty-five-year-old cripple was deluding himself if he clung to that belief. For a while Selver had also considered trying to hire professional help and a private detective had seemed a possibility, but the idea had several drawbacks. Regarding Eddy Buchanan, it was absurd in a way to seek defence from someone for whom he had built sand-castles and given piggy-back rides in the early 1950s, but the thin freckled youth of that epoch had turned into a raw-boned six-footer.

  Selver had good reason to remember the last occasion on which he had seen young Eddy, for it had been at the funeral of Buchanan’s parents who had both been fatally injured in a car crash. Attendance at the Golders Green Crematorium had been a sad occasion for Selver, a much sadder one for his wife Beatrice who had been very fond of Edna Buchanan, occasionally meeting her and corresponding from the time they had been neighbours in Hanbury Street, off the Whitechapel Road.

  From the sombre midwinter funeral memories Selver’s mind flitted back to happier days, the summers from 1948 to 1955, throughout his son Billy’s lifetime in fact, when the Buchanans and the Selvers had shared holidays in Margate, Brighton, and Weymouth. Money had always been short then, and there had been little to spend on amusements apart from odd pennies for ice-creams. Five years older than Billy Selver, Eddy Buchanan had seemed to feel protective about him and was always willing to play with him on the beach while the parents went for walks. Selver knew that it was the sight of Eddy, healthy and happy, that had been the main reason for him wanting to move away from the Buchanans after Billy’s death.

  The address Bathwick Mews had stuck in his memory since the brief meeting at Golders Green. Eddy had said then that he could always be contacted there through a sports-car garage run by an ex-racing-driver friend of his. Selver knew that Eddy’s own racing career had been brief. ‘Up like a rocket and down like the stick’, he had once commented to Beatrice. Now Eddy might have resumed his feckless wanderings around Europe and be out of reach, but there was also a chance that he had settled down at last to some sensible job. Hovering tantalizingly in Selver’s mind was the vague memory of more recent news of Eddy Buchanan, something that Beatrice had told him while he was occupied with other matters. For a few moments he fished for this in his trivia-packed memory, then decided it was not worth worrying about when he could walk to Bathwick Mews in about five minutes from his shop in Crawford Street.

  He decided on a useful time-table of events. Make one more telephone call to Sidney’s home number; call in at Crawford Street; visit Bathwick Mews. He went into the bedroom again and dialled Sidney’s number, visualizing the slightly sombre and old-fashioned apartment, rather over-stuffed with ‘choice pieces’. As the bell continued to ring without response the fleeting, absurd idea of a doublecross passed through his mind, then he heard a youthful voice sedulously repeating the number. Selver smiled and said, ‘All bets off.’

  ‘Hello, Uncle Leo.’

  ‘Hello, young Clive. Still sticking on seventeens?’

  ‘That depends.’

  ‘I know it does. It depends on whether you can find a mug like me. I’m coming round for another pontoon lesson shortly. Meanwhile I’d like a word with your old man. I tried his shop this morning but they said he wouldn’t be there today.’

  ‘He’s not here, Uncle. Gone off on a business trip I think but I don’t know where.’

  ‘Damn! Sorry, Clive, but I was banking…Is your mum in?’

  ‘Gone shopping. She went to Harrods just after lunch. Be back by tea-time I expect.’

  ‘Okay, Clive. Will you tell her I phoned and that I shall call again, probably about six. Perhaps if she’s popping out she’ll leave a message with you where your dad is. I want to contact him pronto. What are you doing, old chap?’

  ‘Just playing. Monopoly.’

  Selver knew it was ten to one that Clive was playing the game by himself and swallowed down the comment ‘Well, you should win then,’ saying, ‘Good. You need all the practice you can get. Because if your dad’s coming home this evening I shall be calling in and we’ll have a return match. For high stakes this time. I need to get back some of the cash I lost last week. Well, cheerio, old lad.’

  ‘Can we play pontoon if there’s not time for Monopoly?’

  ‘Of course, Clive. Probably see you later on then.’

  ‘Good. Cheerio, Uncle Leo.’

  Clive’s voice was too serious, his looks too thoughtful and his behaviour too circumspect for a boy of ten. Selver knew that being the only child of middle-aged parents was always liable to lead to a situation rather like that, but Norah and Sid had worked on the process of making Clive excessively well-behaved and above all passive. The Chards did not have the freemasonry and intimate relationship of a happy family—they were more like three adults rooming together. In the busy, ambitious world that Norah and Sid inhabited a child was something of a handicap and they did not hide this, being quite open about their impatience to send Clive away to boarding-school.

  Having replaced the phone Selver studied it as though it might perform a trick if left alone: he was unaware of his surroundings, brooding bitterly on the unfairness of life. When Billy had been alive he and Beatrice had found pleasure in his company eve
ry single day. Norah and Sidney Chard did not deserve to have Clive.

  Chapter IV

  A lump in the throat. Leo Selver was always puzzled by the mental and physiological processes which could contrive the painful sensation. This time it had been caused by seeing a boy about seven years old, dressed in grey trousers and a white shirt, waiting at the Belisha beacon on the corner of Paddington Street. Hearing children laughing or seeing them running homewards from school were the usual hazards. Tears pricked behind his eyes. He sniffed and swallowed.

  Turning out of Marylebone High Street into Paddington Street, Selver realized he had walked from Welbeck Way ‘on automatic’, oblivious of his surroundings, absorbed in his resentful thoughts about Billy’s freak illness, the meningitis that had put a stop to any chance of real happiness for him with Beatrice. He felt sure that if Billy had lived their relationship would have been strong enough to make up for Beatrice’s present sexual apathy. As it was he could not stop looking elsewhere, though he could see the folly of his behaviour. No doubt their mutual friends guessed at his affairs and thought Beatrice was wonderful to put up with his philandering. But would someone able to look deep into human hearts come to the same conclusion?