“Yes, Miss Coleman?”
“Mr. Law says the Durrant deeds are with Old’ castle for engraving the...”
“Tell Mr. Law to have them here for Durrant or—may God help him. Why the hell wasn’t he ready for Durrant!”
Nicholas snapped his shutter. What a nice day to pick for a mistake 1 And this damn fool Durrant. Every thought coming out of his mind as slowly and crooked as a worm out of his hole...
At ten twenty-five Miss Coleman brought in all the documents for the Durrant business. He looked up at her white face. Obviously she had had an anxious time with Law.
“How did he get them?”
“I don’t know, Mr. Bude. They are here, anyway.”
“Thank you.” He gave a slight smile of thanks. “Good God, isn’t this storm ever going to break?”
“I wish it would, the...”
The page came in with a cup of tea and a box of aspirins. “What’s this?”
“I thought a cup of tea and a couple of aspirins...” He looked at her, nodded, thanked the page. When he had gone out Nicholas looked up at Miss Coleman. “Thank you, for thinking of me...”
“I was thinking of the bank, Mr. Bude.” Her face was cold. “Even on a hot day, Bude’s Bank ought to keep cool.”
Then she went out, and Nicholas found his hand trembling as he took up the cup of tea. Damn her, she had about as much humanity as a statue.
The cabinet buzzed. “Mr. Durrant.”
Nicholas wiped his hands hastily on his handkerchief, got up and steadied himself to deal with Durrant. Miss Coleman, he knew, was right, and now her cold sense of business braced him as Durrant came in.
There was a huge, untrustworthy grin on Durrant’s face. He paused on the threshold and said: “Oh, it’s nice and cool in here!”
All through the morning and afternoon London waited inside the black bomb of the sky for the lightning to splinter the cloud and refresh the air with the cool shrapnel of rain. By three o’clock Nicholas felt so exhausted that his nerves twanged like wires at every buzz in the cabinet. He nearly tore the shutter off now as he opened it to Miss Coleman’s signal.
“Mr. Symes. I think you’d better talk to him.” Nicholas picked up the hand telephone. “Symes? Yes?”
“Mr. Bude, I don’t want to question your judgment, but I was surprised at you granting the Guilfoyle that loan, and...”
“Guilfoyle? Loan?”
“Yes, I have just got your letter, and my inquiries about the Guilfoyle Trust make me think...”
“Hold the line a moment, Symes, please.” Nicholas pressed the button and opened the shutter. “Come in, Miss Coleman.” Nicholas put his hands in his pockets as she came in. “Miss Coleman, what the hell is Symes talking about?”
“The Guilfoyle, Mr. Bude. I sent your answer by hand as his letter was marked Reply Urgent.” She paused. “I was surprised when you told me to say yes.”
“Christ!” He picked up the telephone. “Symes, that letter is canceled. It was a mistake.” He paused. “My mistake, not Miss Coleman’s.” He put down the telephone, stared at Miss Coleman. “I must be going daft. I wouldn’t loan those people fourpence.”
“That’s what I thought, Mr. Bude. It was queer enough that a Manchester trust should have to come to London for a...”
“Manchester?” He caught himself up. “Oh, yes.”
“You had the letter before you, Mr. Bude, when you told me to say yes to Symes.”
“It’s this damned heat...”
She nodded and went out. Nicholas took out the Personal envelope and saw the Manchester postmark. “Good God! Must have been that! Mix-up in my mind! Thinking of the letter...Getting on my nerves...Must pull myself out of this...”
Buzz in the cabinet. “Can you see Mr. Elder?”
“Send him in.”
Mr. Elder came in, and Nicholas thought he was not looking very well. He completed his business in his usual taciturn and monosyllabic way. Then he made a polite comment on the weather.
“I can’t stick this damn compression in the air, Mr. Elder.” Nicholas laughed. “I slipped up on something today. First time in my life. No wonder. Lights on in the daytime!”
“I don’t like it myself, Mr. Bude.” He paused. “How is the experiment getting on, Mr. Bude?” Nicholas felt every sense in his body taciturn. “Experiment?”
“Oh, the letters you said you were going to write yourself. Or perhaps you didn’t go on with it?”
“Oh that! Dull, Mr. Elder.”
“Oh, disappointing in a way. But normal. Good day, Mr. Bude.”
Nicholas sat back in his chair when Mr. Elder had gone. He looked out at the purple-black sky. Suddenly he spoke aloud. “If this bloody sky doesn’t crack open, something in my head will.” He opened the shutter. “For God’s sake, Miss Coleman, get me some iced water!”
ELEVEN
The storm kept itself bottled up all day, and Nicholas kept his nerves bottled up until dinner at the club. He looked up at Constable, the old waiter, and exclaimed: “Good God, Constable, is this the kind of weather for hot roast pork! For heaven’s sake bring me some cold salmon and salad and that hock I like.”
“Very well, sir!”
Constable had an offended expression on his face, and there was a slight twitch of his whiskers, but he confined his comment to a survey of the diners. Nicholas looked around and saw that all the members within eyesight were loading up on roast pork and hot vegetables. Nicholas asked himself why he came to this moldering hole for his Monday dinner and knew in disgust that he had no choice from his alibi to Muriel. He nearly sickened on the hot moist odor of the dining room and rushed his dinner. Then he smoldered in impatience in the smoking room until the Barrington call was announced at nine of the clock. The talk with Muriel left him in a worse temper, and she seemed to be in a mood as sultry as the weather. He banged down the telephone and came out to find Carraway looking at him.
“Trying weather, sir!”
“Awful!”
“Better take a macintosh, sir, if you’re going for a walk. Might come down any minute.”
“I won’t bother, Carraway. Hate carrying it. Can get a taxi.”
“Very well, sir.”
Nicholas turned to the door, then stopped on a sudden. “Good God! Money! I forgot it.” He went back to Carraway. “Have you got any money, Carraway, to change a check?”
“Yes, sir. How much?”
“Twenty pounds.”
“Twenty pounds, sir? I don’t know.” Carraway counted the money in his desk. “I can give you eighteen, sir.”
“Damn...I mean, that will do.”
“Yes, sir.”
Nicholas wrote the check and felt Carraway watching him with a smile behind his face. That decided him against borrowing two more from one of the members. He thanked Carraway, who had anyway been obliging enough to add three pounds from his own wallet to the fifteen in the desk, and went out.
As he passed through the doorway, Carraway said aloud to himself in a whimsical way: “Blimey! He doesn’t walk after all! He goes on a bus!”
There was a red smoke and black ash in the crumbling sky, and Nicholas felt himself accumulating a combustion in his blood as he walked along to Sidonie’s flat. A scarlet glint along the side of one street made all the passers-by like red Indians. As he went in the door of the block of flats, the dusk was coming down like a nigger scowl on London. Sooner or later, Nicholas thought, the goddam thing would have to bust. He could feel a cargo of fire in him like in that great red bull in the field behind the lodge at Barrington as he prowled by the border of the wood in a thunder-laden light. He felt that if he did not discharge himself somehow he would burst with his intolerable load.
When Sidonie let him in she wore a kimono of opal silk and somehow was cool and light as that Chinese landscape in the drawing room at Barrington.
There was silence a moment, and then he said: “That damn thing looks silly with your hair up.” He suddenly could see her beauty
falling down like a golden rain, if she would release that plaited rope of hair, and cooling her skin and cooling him in a long golden shower. He tried to win her with a smile. “If you put that on, you must let your hair down.”
“I am sorry.”
He controlled his anger. “Well, you look almost cool.”
He went over and touched her neck in the open throat of the kimono and somehow was surprised at the tingling heat of her skin. A tremble shot through her from his hand. Then he saw that she had nothing else on except the kimono.
“You look hot and bothered in that suit. I’ll lend you a dressing gown.”
She shivered again.
“You didn’t like me touching you.”
“Oh, don’t be a fool.”
Then he knew what she meant and went and took hold of her and tried to kiss her. She tore away. He swore.
“Damn you. You are not a woman at all!”
She went into the bedroom and brought him out a light silk dressing gown and handed it to him. He went into the bathroom and washed his face in cold water and undressed. His anger gnawed at the way she humiliated him. He went out and found her standing in exactly the same place he had left her, as if she had been nailed there. The words jumped out of his mouth.
“By God, I believe you hate me.”
There was not the slightest movement on her face in reply. He went over and caught her by the shoulder, and there was a faint twitch on her mouth. Inhuman or not, she was now strung in tension with desire, and he suddenly picked her up and carried her in to the bed. Their passion was a fierce and exhausting struggle, and her teeth had drawn blood from his shoulder. Her coil of hair had come undone and suddenly he caught it and pulled it out a yard long. She tried to free herself from him in a rage, and he looped the rope of hair around her neck and drew it tight. She tried to cough out a protest and then he realized that it was choking her.
He dropped her and exclaimed in dismay.
“I didn’t mean to squeeze it.” He looked at them. “It was just—my hands. I couldn’t help it. The way you go, you are murdering something in me, and I—my anger got the best of me.” She coiled up the long plait and showed no anger. “If you don’t want me, why do you let me come?”
“Why do you come?”
“Because I have to come. If you don’t want to kiss me, or give me yourself, why do you let me come?”
“You pay me, don’t you?”
He sat up in horror. The cold fact spoken in that callous way stunned him. He calmed himself. “Was it necessary to say that?”
“It is necessary to remind you of the plain facts.”
“I see.”
He got up and dressed himself in silence and went out and left the envelope on the table. He was too disgusted to mention that it was short two pounds of the usual amount and that he would make it up next Monday. He did not help himself to his usual whisky and went out without looking back.
When he got into the street he walked to the end and leaned on the gate of the square and looked at the pond. He spoke aloud to himself: “Of course she’s doing it.” He spoke bitterly. “The next letters will be blackmail—whatever the hell these mean.” He repeated the words softly to himself: There is a will to death in your hands. Whose death? He looked at his great hands drooping over the gate. Suddenly he remembered how they had drawn the rope of hair almost too tightly around her neck. A shock of fear ran through him. God, there was something subtle and dark and sinister in all this. His eyes recoiled from the flash as the thunderbolt glittered in the pond. The thunder clapped down on his ears. As the rain tumbled down he felt an awful sense of relief. Somehow, he felt, if that thunderbolt had not burst in the sky it might have burst in his head. He walked back to the club, his head bared to the absolution of the rain.
TWELVE
Since the storm had burst on Monday night, the countryside had been freshened by some rain, and the sky this Thursday morning had the invigorating blue of a Highland lake. Muriel walked about the garden and saw the green moisture of the plants in the brilliant sunlight and felt the red sap of life running in her. Even old Forsyte, the head gardener, walked briskly among his revived nurslings and looked as if he might even approve a springing weed because it was green and growing after a draught of rain.
She was in a turbulent mood all day, and her humor was not lightened when Nicholas got out of the car looking tired and somehow stifled with the dust of London. She said impatiently: “You look awful. For God’s sake, have a swim and freshen yourself up.”
He was surprised at the sharpness of her voice: “I might as well.”
“You don’t swim or sun-bathe. For all the good you get out of the country, you might as well live in London.” She paused. “Oh, Grierson’s gone.”
“Oh, why?”
“He’s going to take a ship. He got tired of looking out at the sun from a pantry window. I wish you’d go on a ship, too.”
He looked in question at her rather taut face. “Well, I could buy a yacht, and...”
“God, I knew you’d say that!”
She swung away with such a gesture of annoyance that her skirt swirled up on her legs and taunted his eye. God, he would like to spank her. It was bad enough to be spun out after London without being mocked by her golden legs. Blast her...
He was just going to get his bathing trunks when he saw her from his bedroom window lounging in the cane chair by the swimming pool. He paused in anger. He was damned if he was going down there to be tormented by her. He looked at her for a moment and wondered what the devil was happening to her. Could Saluby have anything to do with it? Or was it this tropical summer? He realized that of late he had been avoiding her because it was impossible to remain negative in her neighborhood. He turned from the window in bad humor and went in and had a warm bath and then a cold shower and put on old gray flannel bags and an open coarse green shirt and decided to go for a walk until dinner.
When he got back from tramping the woodland he found that it was five minutes past eight and he was hurrying up to put on a collar when she saw him. “Are you going up to change?”
“I won’t be a minute.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake! Must you put a collar and tie on to have dinner?”
She was still on edge, and he reacted sharply.
“I don’t care a damn if I eat my dinner in my skin.”
“Well, then, come on. I’m hungry.”
He knew that Oxinham did not like his sitting down to dinner like this, and the meal was somewhat unpleasant. They had coffee on the veranda by the greenhouse, and Nicholas was glad enough when Saluby turned up saying that he had an hour to kill whilst waiting on a maternity case and hoping that he wasn’t in the way. Nicholas gave him coffee and a brandy splash with ice and thought Muriel held Saluby in a rather narrow grip with her eyes. He wondered if she disliked him and, feeling that, went out of his way to be civil with him.
They were relaxing quite pleasantly into the mellow evening when Saluby said: “Oh, I forgot to ask. How is the experiment going on?”
Nicholas wished that he had somewhere to put his hands. “Experiment?”
“Yes, the letters to yourself.”
“Oh—just a waste of stamps, Saluby.”
“How disappointing. I mean—I was hoping to get some kind of report from you that I could compare with Sarah’s case and write up somewhere. It might be interesting. Are you still going on with it?”
“Oh—yes.”
“Can I ask—do you have to make any conscious effort to impress on yourself that these letters are of no importance?”
“No. None at all.”
“Negative, completely negative.” Saluby paused. “Perhaps it’s too soon yet for a result.”
“I think that is nonsense!” Muriel’s voice was sharp. “Obviously, the more you get used to them, the less notice you would take of them. I think it’s just childish—about as sensible as picking up a stone to show that it is heavy.”
“W
ell, that’s the only way you can find out it is heavy.”
“That sounds clever, Dr. Saluby, but it means nothing at all. Nicholas is just throwing stones at himself when writing those letters, and that’s a damn silly thing to do.”
“Yes, I suppose so.” Saluby paused. “I suppose, for it to have any result, one ought to get somebody else to write the letters.”
Nicholas had taken up a strong wooden rod from the veranda, and now it suddenly cracked between his hands. Saluby looked at him in mild surprise and took the stick from him. Nicholas looked slightly awkward.
“Good Lord, you must have strong hands!” Saluby felt it. “I couldn’t break that on my knee, and you cracked it like a match.”
“Didn’t notice myself doing it.”
Muriel had a curious feeling that Nicholas was uncomfortable. Saluby’s eye chanced on his watch.
“Good Lord! My easel I must go!”
Muriel got up too. “I’ll come down with you. I’m taking out the dogs.”
When they had gone down, Nicholas looked at the bits of the rod and fitted the jagged ends together again. He muttered to himself: “I don’t like Saluby, and I don’t trust him.” He went in and got a coat and took up The Times to soothe him.
As Saluby walked along to the car, he spoke suddenly: “You’re giving off sparks this evening! You jumped on me half a dozen times.”
“I’m sorry. But I’m getting sick of Sarah and that letters nonsense.”
Saluby paused by the car and felt her near him. “I wish I could see you more often. It’s a long time from Monday to Monday.”
“Not long enough, if it’s going to be like this Monday once more.”
He flushed slightly at the steel in her voice. “What do you mean?”
“Nothing—except that I don’t like a game of patience in which I lose.”
“I’m sorry.” He felt that he wanted to get away. He remarked coldly, “I should advise Nicholas to stop writing himself those letters.”
The Chinese Room Page 6
