Kif

by Josephine Tey

  'Not I,' said Kif. 'Don't believe there is one.'

  'Well, that's pretty good for someone who has no ideas on the subject.'

  Kif grinned. 'I never thought about it, but I just don't see how there can be. I'd need a lot of persuading that there was.'

  'Were you properly brought up?'

  'I went to Sunday School, when I was a kid, and learned the usual things, I suppose.'

  'Pearly gates and streets of gold?'

  'Yes, that sort of thing.'

  'And when did you stop believing in that?'

  Kif thought. 'I don't think I ever really believed it.'

  'No, I should think you probably didn't,' said Danny musingly. 'Bump of scepticism well developed, bump of superstition a hollow. It isn't a matter of upbringing at all really. It's a matter of mental equipment. My father was a Catholic and my mother "turned" when she married him, but it was she who believed that Saint Anthony'd find her thimble for her, same as she believed in peeling apples on Hallowe'en, and he didn't give a damn for all the archangels in the heavens.'

  He took up his fiddle and played a little crying phrase over and over.

  'So you don't believe that when I go west I'll get it in the neck for emptying the safes of bloated companies of ruddy profiteers?' he said.

  'Oh, between then and now you can start a new slant. Give all you have to the poor and go round shaving people for nothing.'

  'I think not. I'd have to start soon, for one thing. You see, I can't make old bones. I've got it here.' He tapped his chest.

  Kif, arrested in the middle of a search for the matches, said: 'Gas?' forgetting that Danny had not served in the army.

  'No, I—They wouldn't take me. That was why.'

  'But it isn't bad, is it?' said Kif, unexpectedly moved. Swift death he knew and understood, but this carrying death round with you—it was horrible.

  'Three years, four years, not more. If it's the matches you're looking for, you're sitting on them.'

  'But good God, man, they can cure it Why don't you go away somewhere where the air's good? Switzerland or somewhere.'

  'I'd rather live till I die,' said the little barber's assistant dryly; and Kif, groping wordlessly for the matches, understood, and felt a flame of fellow-feeling spring up in him. If he had only a little time…

  I didn't mean to talk about that,' Danny went on. 'I was only finding out what you believe in. Isn't it amazing what a lot of people accept what they're told merely because they're told it? I suppose that if they were taught from infancy that the world was a big mushroom and the sky blue paper they'd feel bound to believe it. Especially if some kind of bible said so. That's typical of their spoon-fedness—the reverence they have for a Bible. If I had thrown a Bible across the room my mother would have thought that I was a certainty for perdition. A Bible! Just an ordinary hotch-potch of a book—some history, and some myth, and some poetry, and some stud-hook, and a sermon or two. Nothing that you can't pick up from the tuppenny box any day. Even the prophecies aren't as good as some Highland ones that you can buy in any bookseller's at three-and-six. The only thing in the book worth reverence is the English, and they never think of that. It's the reference book of the whole Christian religion, and you can prove anything from it. "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and "The wicked flourish like the green bay tree," and so on.'

  Kif turned his head at that. 'What would you do if a man robbed you of everything you had in the world and everything you were going to have, and you were told that?'

  'What? "Vengeance is mine?" I would have a call to be the instrument of the Lord. When clergymen go to a better paid job they always have a "call" "A region of greater scope and activity." Ugh!' Danny flicked his slender fingers as if to rid them of something foul, and wandered into a dissertation on the iniquities of the priest caste and the unloveliness of its history. He had reached the Druids by the time Kif got up to go, with the inevitable book under his arm.

  Kif had taken to reading in bed again, a habit he had lost during his life in the army, and he devoured print at the rate of a book every two nights. Baba silently resented these oblongs of red or blue or green which she recognised as a talisman against her charms. If it were not for them, she felt, he would have capitulated long before now, worn out, starved. She had cast him out originally in a blaze of anger, and she had continued to keep him there 'to teach him'. But he was not proving the apt pupil she had anticipated, and she wanted him.

  It is difficult to imagine how the affair would have ended if it had not been for accident. A shriek from the kitchen one night brought him pell-mell there to find Baba struggling with a blazing window-curtain.

  'Keep away,' he said, and with a wrench brought the curtains, pole and all, to the floor, where with considerable difficulty he smothered them with the hearthrug. Breathless and fey with excitement he took the white and shaking Baba into his arms.

  He came to his senses to find that she was answering his kisses with utter abandon.

  'Baba,' he whispered, drawing her down to a chair, 'marry me. Will you? Baba!'

  He had not time to analyse the look in her eyes. Her arm was round his neck, pulling him to her. 'Kiss me,' she said. 'Kiss me again.' And Kif was nothing loth.

  Presently though she sat up, pushing her shining hair away from her face, and said: 'Lummy, look at the mess! And I bought these curtains only three months ago!'

  He did not glance at the ruin. 'When will you marry me?' he asked. 'Soon? I can keep you all right. How soon, Baba?'

  'Don't let's talk of it just now,' she said. 'I'm all of a do-da.' And he let her go.

  But when he returned to the subject the following night while they were dancing, she again evaded him, and a small cold trickle seeped into his exuberance. Was it possible she was going to say no? In a slowly growing panic he reviewed his possible rivals: Bennet, the theatrical agent, typical London Jew, sleek and dark and talkative; Denman, the 'cellist, almost as beautiful as Angel, his red-gold hair brushed high from a white forehead and cut in a short side-whisker on his cheek-bones; Cleland, the antique-dealer, whose acquaintance she had made at one of the innumerable auction sales which she attended as other people go to plays—tall, shy, stammering, young and rich; Barkis, the little ex-service man who had bought the tobacconist's business in the next street; Miller, who as Raoul ran a cabaret up West, and was reported to have made a fortune in six weeks. He could think of others, but these were in the first flight. And yet—there was last night in the kitchen.

  In the dim intimacy of the taxi home he tried again to bring her to the point.

  'What makes you so keen on marriage?' she said at last, and something like exasperation sounded in her voice. 'What d'you want out of it? Kids?'

  'No, I don't want anything but you. We needn't have kids if you don't want them. It's only you I want.'

  'Well, you can have me.'

  'Baba!'

  'Only let's hear a little less of the marriage business.'

  His arm round her relaxed. 'What do you mean? Are you suggesting—what do you mean?'

  'Exactly what I say.' Something in his tone gave hers a defiant twist.

  'But, Baba, I don't want that! I want you for keeps.'

  'You don't want much, do you! No one's ever going to have me for keeps.'

  She sat silent in her corner while he remonstrated and entreated; but it was she who mocked and he who was sullen as she bade him good night on the stairs.

  A fortnight later Baba announced to her family at the mid-day dinner—a meal at which Kif was rarely present—that that afternoon she was going room-hunting with Kif.

  'Dear me,' said her father, 'is he thinking of leaving us?'

  'Well, it's time he had a decent place of his own, like Danny's. That little back room is a miserable hole.' Her wide eyes rested easily on her father's face.

  'That's true enough,' said Angel. 'And Sammy'll be wanting it very soon anyway.'

  Baba's eyes were suddenly swords with which she stabbed he
r brother's hostile stare. 'Wrong for once, Mr Clever,' she said; 'Sammy's not coming back here.'

  'Oh? Is he going into rooms too? Shouldn't have thought Sammy would see the necessity of it, somehow.'

  'Oh, you know a hell of a lot, don't you!'

  'Be quiet, both of you,' said Mr Carroll mildly, and there was quiet.

  The rooms into which Kif migrated were not at all reminiscent of Danny's, but the landlady was a friend of Baba's; and Baba had done her best with new cretonnes to give them a cheerfulness which would make up for their undoubted ugliness. Danny, who was called in at the last moment, casually, to view them, had asked her why she hadn't offered to do up the rooms properly, 'so you could get rid of that'—pointing to the patterned wall-paper.

  'I did suggest it, but she put her foot down, and I can't afford to offend her.'

  'Well, make her take away the portrait gallery,' said Danny.

  For two months Kif lived at 18 Dormer Street a life of such brilliant high-lights and such deep shadows as he had not yet known. He was hopelessly in love with Baba, but he felt that he possessed her only when she was with him, that his physical presence was the measure of her liking for him. She made no pretence of giving up her usual round of amusement in his favour; she continued to divide her evenings as she had always done among the more favoured of her train, her choice being regulated solely by what appealed to her most at the moment. She had never any compunction in throwing over a previous engagement if a momentarily more attractive one materialised at the last minute, and her edict was accepted by the unfortunate one in the resigned and unresentful spirit in which we accept natural phenomena—flood, fire and tempest. Who were they to grumble? Were they not made free of the sunlight at other times? But what Baba did give Kif, she gave royally, because it was what she herself wanted most at the time.

  In that lay, I think, the secret of Baba's unholy charm. She was, thanks to her ruthlessness, almost invariably doing what pleased her, and the joy of it lit her beauty to a flame. Whatever she did she did wholeheartedly, since she did nothing through compulsion or on sufferance. And Kif, comforted by the knowledge that if Baba did not belong to him, at least he was favoured beyond all the others, used his natural capacity for living for the moment to make their hours together particular separate heavens with which to balance the purgatories of her absence.

  His days continued to be devoted to the sale of soap, and his evenings when Baba was otherwise engaged were spent with Angel at a boxing-match, or billiards, or the theatre, or in Danny's flat. Neither Angel nor Danny spent much time at Dormer Street; Danny said the colour made him sea-sick, and a quiet evening by the fire did not appeal to Angel as an ideal amusement. But Danny's friendliness to Kif had not suffered a relapse when Baba had once more shown him favour, and Angel, whose chorus-lady was again on tour, was prodigal with invitations and suggestions for their mutual amusement.

  His evenings with Baba began usually with dancing and ended at his rooms. There Baba would lie in one of the creaking basket-chairs whose decrepit ribs showed abruptly here and there through her brave cretonne, blowing smoke-rings with her short pale mouth, and discussing people and things—concrete things; Baba's conversation never soared into the realms of abstract speculation. She would weigh the pros and cons of Denman's accepting an offer to play at a West End picture-house, or she would recount an adventure of Sally Myers, or she would criticise in retrospect the appearance and manners of their fellow-dancers and speculate on their private lives, or she would discuss the best methods of making people who had no intention of buying Crimson Rambler soap change their minds. And Kif would sit in the opposite chair, watching her, and pretending to himself that they were married.

  Going home one frosty night in January they met Danny, who stopped to tell them 'a good one on Angel', and without waiting to see the effect of his ribald tale went away, chuckling, into the dark.

  Baba stood staring after him until Kif took her arm and urged her into a walk again.

  'Why isn't Danny jealous?' she asked abruptly.

  'Perhaps he is, poor devil,' said Kif. 'I don't blame him.'

  'No, he isn't,' she said, and was absent-minded for the rest of the evening. Later she said: 'Do you know that Danny has what they call second sight? Scotchmen have it sometimes.'

  Kif grinned. 'All the winners?' he asked.

  'You needn't be so uppish. Even scientists say there's a lot in it. And I know a girl…'

  Kif listened to the tale while he watched the way her lips alternately hid and revealed her short level teeth, and between two kisses promised that he would go with her to a famous crystal-gazer. He had forgotten the promise entirely until he found himself, some days later, being conducted to a flat above some business premises that bordered the park where they had been dawdling Laughing he tried to back out of it, but she said, 'Why you promised!' and looked at him with wide grieved eyes.

  Kif was quite prepared to find the door opened by a pseudo-slave of alleged Eastern origin, and the tall correct parlour-maid in her black-and-white disconcerted him.

  'Have you an appointment, madam?'

  'Yes,' said Baba astonishingly.

  'Is the appointment for two, madam?'

  It was Baba who looked disconcerted now. 'I just made an appointment,' she said.

  'I'll inquire, madam,' said the maid. 'Will you take a seat?' In a moment she was back. 'Miss Fitzroy will see either the lady or the gentleman, but not both.'

  'You go, then, Kif,' said Baba. 'Go on!' as he was preparing to argue. And Kif, partly from a natural curiosity, partly from a masculine desire to avoid a discussion in public, suffered himself to be led away.

  Miss Fitzroy was an aquiline lady, inclining now to embonpoint, but by no means the fat old gipsy Kif had unconsciously expected. She bade him good-day in a pleasant cultured voice and asked him to sit down.

  'You want to know about the future, of course. I have one request to make. Will you please not interrupt till I have finished the sitting?' Kif, feeling decidedly foolish, gave his assurance. 'And another thing. It is not always possible to tell whether the vision is of something past or something to come. But if it is of the past you will recognise it, I expect.'

  She bent forward to the crystal lying on its black cushion on the table, and there was a long silence. Kif sat in his habitual quiet, his bright eyes sliding curiously from one article of furnishing to another. He had so far assimilated the Carroll point of view as to wonder what kind of a 'job' this house might provide, and he had almost forgotten the prophetess in his speculations when she said:

  'I see a small dark man in a room with two others. I think the room is an office. They are laughing and he is talking. I think they are laughing at him. He is trying to convince them of something. He is very much in earnest. I think he is distressed. He keeps pulling one hand through the other.'

  Kif, inattentive till now, woke to a sudden interest. Danny did that—pulled one hand through the other—whenever he got excited. But then—vague!

  Forgetting the prohibition he said: 'What does he do with his hands? Show me.'

  'This,' she said, her eyes on the crystal, and gripping one hand with the other imitated Danny's action.

  Kif sat looking at her very much as a horse looks at the object it is making up its mind to shy at, but she was silent now, absorbed in contemplation of the crystal. After a long interval she began again.

  'There is a dimly lit place. A barn. No, a stable. Someone—I think it is you—is hanging a bridle on a nail, and there is another man there. It all began then.'

  'What did?'

  'I don't know. Now it is brighter. No, it is another place altogether. A kitchen full of shadows. You are there laughing with someone—a woman, I think. There is something on the table, but her shadow is over it. Yours is swinging about on the wall. Enormous. No, its—it's—No!'

  The last negative was shot out so unexpectedly that it almost brought Kif to his feet. She was no longer looking at the crystal; s
he was gazing at him in a kind of incredulous horror.

  'What's the matter?' he asked. 'I didn't mean to talk. I'm sorry.'

  She was still staring at him. Really the woman must be dippy.

  'Yes,' she said vaguely, 'you shouldn't have talked. I asked you not to.' But she did not appear to care greatly or even to know what she was saving.

  'Go on,' said Kif, 'I won't interrupt again.' But she shook her head.

  'No. I'm sorry, I can't do any more to-day. I—it isn't—it won't come to order, you understand. I'm sorry. You don't owe me anything.' Her eves, which had been fluttering between her hands and the crystal, came back to his face and stayed there as if fascinated. As Kif got up to go she said: 'Will you tell me your name?'

  'Archibald Vicar,' said Kif, seeing no reason why he should withhold it.

  'Thank you.' She stood up and remained standing, still and silent, as he walked past her to the door. 'As if I were royalty,' he thought, irrelevantly, and went out feeling sold.

  'Well?' said Baba as soon as the front door shut behind them. 'Well?'

  'Oh, a washout. Absolutely. She threw a fit because I interrupted her, and wouldn't go on.'

  'But what did she tell you before that?'

  'She didn't tell me anything. She said she saw three men yarning in an office, but none of them seemed to be me. Tell me—who does this?' He drew one hand, palm facing him, slowly through the other.

  'Wait a minute. Do it again.' She watched, and in a few seconds she said: 'It's Danny, isn't it?'

  Kif nodded, and she gripped his arm till her finger-tips bit into his flesh. 'Did she see Danny? Did she?'

  'Well,' he admitted, 'one of her three men might have been Danny, and again might not.'

  'What was he doing?'

  'He was telling the tale to the other two men.'

  'What were they like?'

  'She didn't go into details.'

  'And what else?'

  'That was all, I think. No, she saw me in a stable. Considering the amount of stables I've been in in my life that isn't a great achievement.'

  'What did you interrupt her about?'