Then I fell asleep.
Off and on I get this dream. I’ve had it since I was a young boy and it’s never really changed much. I’m lying on a bed in a room I don’t know and when I look up I see that the ceiling’s covered with slugs. They’re moving, but only slowly the way they do. If you didn’t look closely you’d think they were still. And then, one by one, they start to drop off and land on my bed, all over my body and face. You’d think that after so many years the dream wouldn’t be horrible any more, because it’s so familiar. But it is. It’s still horrible.
I had it on my first night in the room. I woke up with my face and body damp. Only a dream, I always say to myself. You’ve got to be reasonable about such things. It isn’t as if they’re real slugs in the real world. Only a dream.
I tried to get back to sleep, but I couldn’t. Because it was just then that I heard it for the first time. That dreadful noise, that whine, which has been the source of all the trouble.
The black mongrel in the next yard was whining. It barked sometimes. Sometimes it growled. It even scratched the wall and rattled its chain. Mostly it just whined, a low whine that rose to a howl and then dropped back to a whine again. I was sure that it couldn’t keep it up. But it did. It did. All night long. I was still staring at the sky, fully awake, and darkness was becoming light in those tiny grey streaks, before the noise stopped and there was silence. Silence at last. I rubbed my eyes, turned over, and slept.
3
I’m not the sort of person who goes looking for trouble. Well, it isn’t wise to do that. But when I woke up on the Sunday morning I put on my dressing-gown and went down to speak to Agnes about the dog. I mean, you can’t have that sort of noise at all hours. It isn’t reasonable.
I knocked on her door and waited. After a bit she came out. She was smoking a cigarette and wearing only a nightdress. It was silky and short and I could see right through it to her body. I could see everything, but she didn’t seem to care. She rubbed her eyes and smiled at me. I looked behind her into the room and I could see a man sitting up in the bed. He was wearing a vest and had his hands tucked behind his head. Was it her husband?
‘I don’t want to complain,’ I said. ‘I’m not the type who goes round complaining. But that dog barked all night and I couldn’t sleep.’
Because she was looking at me in this funny way, I pulled my dressing-gown tight. After a minute she laughed as if she thought me stupid.
‘Well?’ she asked. ‘The poor bleeder’s got to have his bark, hasn’t he? How would you like it if somebody told you you had to stop talking?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘That isn’t really the point.’
‘Of course that’s the point,’ she said. She was running her fingers through her red hair, stroking it up and then letting it fall down again. ‘Look, I’ll tell you what it is. Old Rex misses his master, that’s all. He’s only a dog. He can’t be expected to know that old Peluzzi’s dead, can he? Well? Can he?’
I shook my head. She didn’t really see my meaning.
‘But your room looks out to the front,’ I said. ‘Mine looks out on the back yard and I can hear the dog better than you. I wouldn’t be surprised if you didn’t hear it at all.’
‘He’s got to have his bark. Now, that’s only fair, isn’t it?’
She crossed her legs and smiled at me. Her right knee was moving back and forward, back and forward, and she was pushing her hand through her hair.
The man in the bed shouted something. Agnes winked at me and closed the door. I waited for a bit and then I went up to my room and made tea. I looked out of the window. Standing on tiptoes I could see the dog’s head pressed flat against the concrete of the yard. He was sleeping. Small wonder, I thought. He ought to be sleeping after all that racketing.
I didn’t feel quite right. I had this empty feeling in my stomach. I get that sometimes when I haven’t had eight hours of continual sleep. It’s a bit like indigestion, only worse. It’s worse because there isn’t any pain. I drank the tea and then I felt better. As I dressed I thought about Agnes. Her attitude seemed unreasonable. I mean, she was all right because she didn’t sleep at the back of the house. Because she was all right, she wasn’t worried about me.
I wondered if any of the other tenants had heard it. When you’ve got a genuine complaint you like to share it with somebody else. So I went across the landing and knocked on the door facing mine. Almost at once it was pulled open and a young man in a black sweater was looking at me. He had one of those Chinese moustaches, the kind that droop down over the lips. He had long hair.
I told him my name and explained my business. He was very patient and didn’t interrupt me once. And then when I had finished talking he kept looking at me. He didn’t seem quite all right to me, because he looked as if part of him was absent. Perhaps he was sick. But I don’t know much about illnesses, since I’ve never really had a day’s illness in my life.
After a time he said,
‘You’re quite sure that a dog does exist, are you? The fact is, I’ve got a strange feeling that I’ve heard this all before, do you know the feeling? I don’t really like it much.’
‘But it barked all night long,’ I said. ‘You must have heard it.’
He blinked his large black eyes.
‘The problem really is one of consciousness. One oughtn’t to allow sensory phenomena to impinge upon one’s consciousness to the exclusion of reason. But this is all a bit of a drag, don’t you think?’
He was terribly intelligent. You could see that straight off. I didn’t understand him altogether. I’m not stupid, no, far from it, but my mind works in a different way. He stood there in the door for about a minute and then he added,
‘What I’m trying to say is that you ought to be able to get on top of it all.’
‘But the barking,’ I said. ‘Well, it’s more whining and howling than barking. You must hear it just as clearly as me.’
‘I don’t hear a thing, man,’ he answered.
I went back to my room. I sat on the bed for a time. When I looked out of the window the dog was slopping over a bowl of water. I know that I’m sensitive to noise, very sensitive indeed, but the dog must surely have annoyed somebody as well as me. I watched it for a bit. It drank the water, licked its mouth, and then began to sniff the ground.
I felt sleepy again, but the sun was shining outside. So I decided to go for a stroll. That usually clears the head. I walk quite briskly, which is good for the circulation. I went round the block twice, walked down to the railway station and looked at the trains, and then went to a café in Cricklewood Lane for breakfast.
I ate bacon and eggs and thought about the dog. I’ve never really been fond of dogs. Somehow they make me nervous, the way they sniff round your feet and then stare at you. But I’d never wished any dog harm. Once I’d even had a puppy when I was a boy. It was a little white mongrel with brown markings. I liked it, especially when it came to lick the palm of your hand. But it ran out of the house one morning straight into the path of a truck and was crushed. My mother cleaned up the remains with a brush. She just swept it into the side of the gutter. I didn’t really miss it, except at first, but after a time I forgot. Now I can’t even remember what I called it. It wasn’t Rex anyway, I know that much.
I finished my breakfast and looked up to catch the waitress’s eye so that I could order a pot of tea. I saw then that some of the other people in the café were looking at me. I knew why. Sometimes I think aloud, if you see what I mean. It’s not like talking to yourself, because that means you’re a bit funny, it’s more a sort of saying the things that are running through your head. I must have been doing it then. I smiled at the people who were looking but none of them smiled back. When the waitress brought me a pot of tea I drank it quickly and then left.
I went back to my room with a copy of the Sunday Mirror. I sat in the chair reading it. After a time the young man from the room next door came in. He had combed his long hair back and had tied it with
a white ribbon in an old-fashioned style.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ he said. He sat down on my bed and crossed his legs. For a moment I thought he had fallen asleep but he was only thinking about something. He blinked quickly and said, ‘If the dog really bugs you – now this is an entirely practical suggestion – you could get yourself some earplugs. A certain friend of mine has a pair that I know he’s trying to get rid of, so you could have them dirt cheap.’
This sounded like a good offer to me. But I didn’t want to rush into anything. I might buy the plugs and the dog might not whine any more. Then I’d be left with a pair of useless earplugs. So I said that I’d like a day or two to think about it.
‘I don’t want to push you into anything, man,’ he said. ‘But they might get snapped up.’
I shrugged my shoulders and picked up my Mirror. This was a bit of bluff on my part, because I wanted to look disinterested. That way, you can make it seem as if you don’t care. The young man got up from the bed and stood in the middle of the room for a time. We stared at each other. There was a long silence. He looked away first. I knew then that I’d get the plugs really cheap and that they wouldn’t go to anyone else.
‘Let me know,’ he said, and then went out of the room.
I lay down on the bed and finished reading the Mirror. There were some photographs of girls in it. One of them was wearing a swimsuit, but she was nearly naked. I held the picture up before my eyes and gazed at it. I imagined it to be Gladys Millar and she was saying, feel my breasts. Come on, come on. I imagined putting my hands down on the girl’s breasts and then I could almost feel her hands on my neck. But I put the paper away after that. Sometimes your imagination can be a bad thing, when it isn’t properly controlled and gets out of hand. I lay back and looked up at the ceiling.
I liked the room. In daylight the pink walls and the white ceiling were pleasant and comfortable. I fell asleep for a bit.
When I woke it was late afternoon. I heard Rex bark loudly and I went to the window.
He was jumping up and down at the end of his chain. A woman was putting a bowl of meat in front of him. She was a small woman with short black hair and thick, powerful arms. They were a man’s arms. She was wearing black clothes. I knew it was Mrs Peluzzi straight off. She watched the dog eat and then she turned and went indoors.
After that, there was silence.
4
Cats of course are different altogether. They’re proud and independent and only half-civilised. A dog will come sniffing round when you call its name but a cat will only look at you with disgust. A cat will come to you only when it wants something, but a dog will come almost anytime. Mind you, I don’t like cats all that much either. But if I had to choose between the two, I know which I’d pick.
As I watched Rex finish his dinner I thought about cats. But not for very long, because as soon as the dog had licked his bowl clean he did a disgusting thing. He lifted his leg, wet the ground, and then smelled what he had done. He seemed to take great pleasure in doing this. His pink tongue was flicking out and in and his eyes were fixed to the pool of urine. And then he opened his mouth very wide and shook his head back and flattened himself out on the concrete.
I sat on the bed and picked up my Sunday Mirror again. I was reading the sports pages when there was a knock on the door and Agnes came into the room. She was still wearing her see-through nightdress but on top of this she had a dressing-gown that hung open. She was really a slovenly creature. She had a cigarette stuck in her mouth.
She sat beside me on the bed and said,
‘I hope you’re settling in nicely.’
I then explained to her about the noise of the dog and she smiled sympathetically and dripped her ash on the carpet.
‘Like I said,’ she said, ‘Rex is pining away for his master. Now, I don’t think you want to take too much notice of any noise he might make, because that’s bound to pass. Have you met any of the other tenants yet?’
I told her about the young man.
She said, ‘Oh, Roderick’s a dear. You wouldn’t think so to look at him, but he comes from a wealthy family.’
‘He’s very intelligent,’ I said. I didn’t want to talk about Roderick, I wanted to talk about the dog. But she wasn’t interested.
‘Highly intelligent,’ she said. She looked about for an ashtray and then threw her cigarette into the hearth. I picked it up and stamped it out and then went to the window. Sitting close to her on the bed, I had discovered that she smelled a bit. It wasn’t a strong smell, but because I’m sensitive to smells of all kinds, I had to move away.
She said, ‘I hope you pay your rent on time, Eric.’
‘I’ll pay you once a month, regularly,’ I said.
She nodded her head. Strands of her hair kept slipping about her face. She got up from the bed and stretched her arms. Her nightdress rose up her legs. She wasn’t wearing stockings and I could see dark blue veins around her thighs.
‘I have to go to work tomorrow,’ I said. I knew that wasn’t really relevant, but sometimes I say things that just come into my head. It’s bad habit, because it makes you lose the thread of conversation. It’s one of my few faults really, and I keep saying that I’m going to be more careful in future.
‘Do you like to get up early?’ she asked.
‘I’m usually dressed by seven,’ I said.
‘Oh,’ she said, ‘an early bird.’
I laughed. She looked at me strangely and then laughed herself, although she didn’t seem to be laughing at the same thing as me. But while we were laughing together I felt that I liked her. You can never be sure with people, though. You never quite know what you’re getting. With rooms it’s different, because you can always look under the sink and tap the skirting, but you can’t do anything like that with people.
She sat down again and took another cigarette from her dressing-gown. I had to open the window. Rex barked from the yard and for a second I was afraid that he was starting up again. But he only barked once.
‘It’s cold in here,’ she said.
I did some of my breathing exercises at the open window.
‘It’s a funny thing,’ she said, ‘but I feel that you’re not quite at ease with me, are you, Eric?’
‘At ease?’
‘You seem all sort of nervy.’
‘Ah, well,’ I said.
She puffed at her cigarette.
‘Do you know what I mean, love?’
I didn’t like the way she seemed to be getting personal. Gladys Millar had been a bit like that before she went off to have her baby. She kept coming up to me in the canteen and sitting at my table and I saw how she was getting fatter all the time. I thought that she was just putting on weight, I didn’t dream it was because of a baby. But she said things to me that put me off my dinner. This annoyed me, because the canteen food is of a high quality. Besides, it was a waste of money. She kept saying personal kinds of things. She asked what colour was my underwear and did I ever stain it. She asked if I’d like to put my hand up her knickers. She asked if I wanted to have her and did I ever wank thinking about her. In the end I had to avoid her by going to a café near the factory where the food was inferior and more expensive, but it was worth it just for the peace of mind I got.
‘Do you know what I mean, love?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I said.
‘You’re not a poove, are you? I’ve got nothing against pansies, you know. Some of my best friends are that way inclined, so you needn’t be ashamed.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, no.’
‘Just so long as we get that straight,’ she said. ‘I mean, you could entertain your boyfriends up here, it wouldn’t bother me one bit.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I said I wasn’t.’
‘We’ve had queers here before,’ she said. ‘I draw the line at sadists, though.’
I sat down on the chair and stared at her. She was leaning back across the bed with her knees raised up and her arms by her sides.
I said something about the dog and how it had disturbed my rest.
She said, ‘You must pop down for a cup of tea sometime.’
I gazed up at the ceiling for a bit. Then she straightened herself and walked over to the door.
‘I could speak to Mrs Peluzzi herself,’ I said.
‘You don’t want to do that, darling. Mrs Peluzzi’s still in mourning and she wouldn’t thank you for complaining about Rex. Just forget all about it. It’ll pass.’
After she had gone I felt exhausted. I didn’t care for the way she had become personal all of a sudden. It was a bit too much for me. I believe that you’ve got to keep yourself to yourself. If you go around probing into other people’s business, you can get a bad reputation. The Italian at the factory, Benito, asks questions all the time. He doesn’t ask others, just me. How many women you raped this week, eh? How many fall down at your feet begging you for it, eh? That kind of thing goes over the limit. Now I just don’t answer him any more. If he hasn’t got a personal life of his own, he’s not going to share any of mine.
I boiled two eggs and had some buttered toast with them. And then, at eight-thirty, I went to bed.
Rex woke me just before midnight. I sat up. I could hear him whining, his chain rattling, his claws scraping the wall. I knew he missed his master, but I couldn’t feel any real sympathy for him. I just sat there in the dark and listened to this awful whine. It was impossible to get any sleep. I got out of bed and turned on the light and made a pot of tea. But I didn’t enjoy that either. I sat down in the chair and tried to think of other things, so that I could take my mind off the din. But the noise fixed itself on to me. After a time it seemed to be coming from inside my head. I opened my door and went on to the landing. The house was dark and utterly quiet. I went downstairs and stood in the corridor.
A clock began to chime midnight.
I heard voices coming from Agnes’s room. One of them was hers, the other a man’s. I just stood there listening to the hum of their conversation without really hearing what they were saying.
Assassins and Victims Page 2
