In the Middle of the Wood

by Iain Crichton Smith

  He moved back from the window to stand beside the open door of the compartment in which were sitting the man and woman whom he had talked to earlier. And at that moment he saw the hefty man walking towards him along the corridor, rolling from side to side because of the speed of the train. No, he couldn’t do anything to him here, that was certain. Not in this corridor with the sunlight shining on it. So absorbed was he in his thoughts that he didn’t at first realize that the hefty man had spoken to him. What had he asked him? Was there a buffet on this train? Of course there was no buffet on the train, there never had been a buffet on this train. Moreover the hefty man knew that there hadn’t been. He had merely taken this excuse for speaking to him, while all the time smiling at him in a crooked knowing manner, as if he were implying, I know who you are, I know all your tricks, I know that you know who and what I am. Isn’t this a tremendous game? But he himself didn’t smile, no, he watched the hefty man returning down the corridor after he had discovered what he knew already. Damn him, damn him: why was he laughing at him so openly? He was the bully of his dreams, the one he had seen in his nightmares when he was still at school. That bully too had smiled in the same superior manner, that bully too had looked confident and self-sufficient and strong: that bully too had been his master. And also just before the hefty man had turned away, he had looked at Linda, smiled and shaken his head. And she had shaken her head as well as if she and he were in a conspiracy together as of course they were.

  At that very moment she was making as if to return to the compartment where his case was, but he thrust himself in her way.

  “No,” he said, “not yet.” She stared at him despairingly and then asked faintly “Why not?”

  “No reason,” he said.

  So, he turned back to the window again but not before a tall youth had looked at the two of them, about to say something but then deciding against it. Of course the youth thought he was bullying his wife: if only he knew!

  Once he had written a story about Horatio left on his own after Hamlet’s death. And Horatio sat in his corner in the new court in Denmark where all the trains now ran on time, where all the parks were a uniform antiseptic green, where crystal and glass glittered everywhere, and Fortinbras set out in his hunting boots and red coat every morning in search of the elusive cindery fox, and Horatio couldn’t bring himself to speak, for the story was too complicated to tell. No one would believe him if he told what had happened and furthermore his audience was not the kind that he wanted. So he grew old and became a bore and then one day he left the castle, where there were now no secret curtains, and never came back. And Fortinbras too was glad of it for he was tired of Horatio’s silence.

  So it was with himself and Linda. He couldn’t bring himself to tell people of her trick with the telephone book, for instance, and who would believe him? Certainly not that tall youth in the denim jacket, especially when he could look at her and see that her face was deceptively pale. But Ralph wouldn’t let her past him till the last minute. He couldn’t afford to allow her to tell the two men of his new plan. And so he stood there like a sentry, as if guarding her from harm, when all the time he was watching her closely.

  The train bulleted on and he still stood there. And after a while he grew tired. To hell with it, he said to himself, let her go back. I’ll go and sit down but this time I’ll sit among a crowd of people in an open carriage. Surely I can’t be harmed in such a place. He opened the door of the carriage and sat down heavily, feeling the tiredness in his very bones. He squeezed past two youths and sat at the window even though there were other vacant places he might have taken and which were more accessible. He stared dully out at the landscape which was flying past, aware that the two youths were watching him. But he didn’t care. What he had to do was preserve his life, and mockery was a small price to pay.

  ‘When You and I Were Young, Maggie’, the train sang, and it was as if his head were a record spinning, a black disc revolving. The racing train was carrying him to Glasgow, city of green and blue, city of violent action: he didn’t even know where he was going to stay. The important thing was to get into a taxi and ask the driver to take him to a hotel somewhere so that he could sleep. He must sleep, he hadn’t slept for days, weeks. Linda complained that in the middle of the night he would waken her up and interrogate her. One morning he had wakened up and gone to type in his room, his head totally clear as if filled with moonlight. And then he had collapsed, exhausted on his bed.

  He glanced at his watch. Shortly they would be pulling into Queen St station. Another fifteen minutes perhaps. He stared out the window and couldn’t see the names of the stations, the train was going so fast. It was as if the driver sensed like a salmon his destination and was heading for it at breakneck speed. Maybe he wanted to get home for his tea. What an extraordinary thing, Ralph considered, no what an ordinary thing, that the driver should be thinking of his tea and he himself of his own death. A nostalgia for the ordinary almost engulfed him: it was so intense that it brought tears to his eyes.

  And then another thought occurred to him. He was angry with himself that it had not occurred to him before. Just before one arrived at Queen St station the train passed through a tunnel and the carriages became black as pitch, so that even the pallor of a face could not be distinguished in the darkness. This happened just after they had made the stop near the tenements, one of which had a coloured mural on its ancient gable. On the walls one could see the scrawled slogans of the illiterate, the pitiful Glasgow adolescent gangs, in letters red as blood as if written by Dracula. Imagine how he had passed them in earlier days and hadn’t taken them seriously. Why, they were only the pleas of the failed egos for attention, much as his own books were, according to Linda, they weren’t to be considered or studied in any depth. Poor illiterate schoolboys, poor sorrowful aggressive lost souls, writing on the blackboards of stone, open to the wind and the rain and the pervasive dirt and dust.

  He waited, and sure enough the darkness descended: no, ‘descended’ was the wrong word. It thickened around him, palpable, dense. He moved his neck forward in his seat. He was thinking that perhaps the hefty man would lean forward in the darkness having first marked his position, and then proceed to strangle or garotte him in a leisurely manner. The darkness was not a diminution of light but a complete absence of it, and yet a presence of its own too. An absence of light! What would happen if there was no light? There would be no poetry, no prose, no art at all, unless perhaps a totally new kind of literature and painting would emerge. Its kings would be those who walked in darkness, who loved the clouds and the lightless places. Stony statues with rain dripping down their carved skirts. Think of those early artists who had crawled through caves to stab at walls with their phantom weapons, which were really the weapons of art, creating the defenceless imagined animals.

  And then like a huge blossom the light leaped around him, and he was there in his seat, safe, untouched. There was no sign of either the scarred man or the hefty man. There was no sign of Linda either. The train was drawing into the station. Very quickly he pushed past the two youths, pushed the window down, and opened the door. Quickly he ran towards the exit. He handed his ticket over to a ticket collector who seemed to have soup stains on his jacket, and then, crouching behind the barrier, watched. So far he could see neither of the two men nor Linda. And then he did. They were standing at the end of the train talking to her and she was shaking her head. Ralph watched closely as he saw the porter putting the case on his trolley. The two men walked slowly towards the exit. Ralph crouched down so that they could not see him, and then they were making their way into the hubbub of Glasgow, but not before he had seen the hefty man smile as if he had seen him.

  But, no, they didn’t wholly disappear. He could see them standing in the taxi queue. But that could wait. Linda was walking beside the porter who had the case on his trolley. He pushed it through the exit, she handed over her ticket, and then she was standing beside him. He seized the case and said to h
er, “We’d better wait for a while.”

  “What for?”

  “No reason. I just want to wait for a while. Would you like a coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  As a matter of fact he himself didn’t want coffee either. He didn’t like the buffet. There were too many tramps haunting it, violent unstable aggressive men with beards, and long coats falling to their ankles. Sometimes however a policeman would stroll through it, watching for trouble.

  “All right then,” he said, “we can go on.” He carried the case, and Linda followed him obediently. He reached the Left Luggage and on an impulse said, “I think we’ll leave the case here.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just want to.”

  “If you like,” said Linda indifferently. “But hadn’t you better take your shaving gear out of it, and your pyjamas.”

  He knelt down and transferred the articles she had mentioned to her small red case. Then he handed his own case over and received a ticket in exchange. He put it carefully in his wallet, making sure that Linda didn’t see the number on it. Why, she might tell the other two, if she knew the number.

  When they had walked past the Gents and the Ladies he saw that the two men were no longer in the queue. On the other hand they might know certain taxi drivers who would watch out for himself and Linda. They might even have told Linda to watch out for one of them. He studied Linda closely to see if she was making a signal but she did nothing suspicious.

  A taxi drew up and he and Linda got into it. Ralph leaned back as if he had been running a race: he was panting a little. The chatter of the driver’s microphone bothered him: he thought that the driver might be receiving secret instructions. But he was determined that he would remain cool and unflustered.

  “Ask him the name of a good hotel,” he said to Linda.

  He listened as if in a dream and heard the taxi driver mentioning some hotels on Sauchiehall St.

  “Right,” he said, “I’ll choose the Stewart.”

  “Fine,” said Linda, “do you know anything about it?”

  “No, nothing, but it sounds as good as any.”

  “That’s okay,” said Linda. “I don’t mind which you choose.”

  Yet it seemed to him that he had been predestined to choose that particular hotel and that Linda had read his mind. But surely that could not be possible. As if by accident he touched her breast briefly, checking that she might not have a transmitter or some other method of sending a message. Maybe she had some means of keeping in touch with these two hoods, for he was sure that she had employed them. Glasgow was more than ever dangerous: in his imagination he saw it as a place of duels with knives and razors. He saw his own face striped with blood like a tiger’s. He was trembling. He spread out his fingers in front of him and they were shaking as if with fever. Perhaps he should get rid of Linda now. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring her with him. Maybe he should leap out of the taxi while it was standing at a red light and lose himself in the maze of the city.

  In profile she looked innocent and as if carved from marble. She was often bloodless of course and sometimes took a tonic. The number of tonics he had bought for her, how solicitous he had been, and this was how she repaid him. Damn, damn, damn. No one would believe this story if he wrote it down. It was a thrilling novelettish lightweight sort of thing, it was a jigsaw narrative like Glasgow itself. He felt anger rising in him again after the long silence of his dismembered pages. Even now he could hardly believe that she was doing what she was doing. Of course it was her cleverness that had made her follow him, for otherwise she might have lost sight of him. He might have disappeared in Glasgow and taken his books and money with him. No, she had been quick-witted enough to realize that she must not lose sight of him. First of all, she had tried to persuade him to go back to the house but when that tactic had failed she had pretended to weep, and followed him to Glasgow.

  The taxi drew up in front of a large hotel with a tartan frontage and tartan carpet in the foyer. It looked quite expensive, and in the middle of the foyer were exhibition cases with Doulton figures. He stopped at the desk as if marooned in a desert.

  “Mr and Mrs Walton,” he said before Linda could speak. That was clever of him, to think of changing his name. Linda was about to say something but only stared at him in a puzzled manner. “From Ayr,” he wrote. No car, nationality British. A young man led them to the lift, and seemed harmless enough. Then they were climbing inside what seemed to him a large steel safe, and had been let out. The room was Number 520. The boy opened the door for them, Ralph handed him a 50p piece, and then he was in the room and shutting the door behind him. When he had done this he lay down on the bed while Linda took off her coat and hung it in the wardrobe. His eyes vaguely wandered around the room, from the telephone which lay on a small table beside the bed, to the ceiling decorated as if with icing, and then to the floor with its tartan carpet. He saw Linda’s eyes noting the telephone, and said to himself, So that’s it. If I leave you alone in this room you will phone your friends and they will come to the anonymity of a Glasgow hotel and kill me. After all no one knew now where he was, and he had even given a false name. They would probably remove all means of identification from his clothing.

  As he watched Linda he was amazed to see how calm and cool she seemed. How could she possibly be so when she had been so deceitful, when she was determined to get rid of him, had in fact hired people to do so. She wanted him not to be able to prove that she was a traitor. But he would know. If these two men came in the middle of the night he would surely know. There would be one moment when he would know and that would be a satisfaction to him. It was like a story by John Dickson Carr or Ellery Queen, the solution would be revealed at the end, the villain would be unmasked, and all would at last be plain and radiant. He would at last understand what he had suspected but could not prove.

  “I’ll go to the bathroom,” said Linda in the same unnaturally calm voice and he listened to her moving about in it. Then very quickly he rose and tiptoed over to the bathroom and looked in. Linda was on her knees beside the toilet bowl.

  “What are you doing?” he asked in a loud voice.

  She rose quickly to her feet, looking flustered.

  “I … I dropped an earring,” she said. “I was searching for it.”

  “No, you weren’t,” he said. “You were putting a bug in here. I know that’s what you were doing.” And he himself went down on his knees and tried to find the bug but he couldn’t locate it though he knew it was there. He didn’t know much about bugs but had an idea that it could be disguised as perhaps the head of a nail: but there were so many of these that there was no point in even beginning to look. She might even have put the bug behind the large blank mirror that took up most of one side of the bathroom. He was more than ever convinced that she was deceiving him and that she recorded everything he said, to bring it up later as evidence of his unreasonableness and his manic tendencies. “He was always looking for bugs,” she would say, “isn’t that in itself evidence of his madness?” The clarity of his own mind was intense. It was as if he could see and hear right across counties, countries, even Europe. He had never before had such piercing clarity and ease of understanding. But he had to be quick and intelligent, for he was fighting for his life.

  “Please,” he said to Linda. “Why don’t you stop it? You know that I loved you in the past. I never meant you any harm.”

  “What are you talking about,” she said.

  “What I said. Why do you hate me so much?”

  “It’s you who hate me,” she said. “I don’t hate you. You should go to sleep. Why don’t you take a pill?”

  “No,” he said, “I won’t.”

  He was determined that he wouldn’t take a sleeping tablet for he was sure that in his stupor of sleep she would phone her two friends and let them in and then they would kill him. He tried to remember whether they had been given a choice of rooms and couldn’t. Had she for some reaso
n of her own chosen this room?

  He went over to the window. Far below he could see cars like toys and people like dolls walking along the pavements. There was a huge glass building opposite the hotel but he didn’t know what it was. He shuddered and shut the window.

  “I still think you should sleep for a while,” said Linda, “and maybe later we can go down for dinner.”

  “You sleep if you want,” he said, “but I’m staying awake.”

  “All right then,” she said. “I’ll lie down for a while.” She removed her shoes and lay on the bed. It occurred to him that if she thought he was mad she should be more afraid of him. Damn you, he said, you threw a glass of whisky in my face once at a publisher’s party. And then he was analysing memories of past quarrels. Sometimes she would read the Bible to him, as if it was a sword she was placing between herself and him, a shield, naked and virginal. At times she had been frightened of him as if he were driving her crazy.

  “No,” he would shout. “It was you who twisted my mind. You take everything I say so seriously and you are always looking for slights. I’ve never seen anyone as sensitive as you.”

  “But that’s because of you and your friends,” she would say. “You are all so cold and calculating and egotistic. I never see slights that aren’t there.”

  As he saw her lying on the bed, his own mind preternaturally active, he tried to work out where she had her bug. It might be in her handbag which was always cluttered with stuff: on the other hand she might have it somewhere on her body. Maybe that night as they lay in bed together the microphone would pick up his very breathing. He would have to be very careful what he said to her for she was infinitely cunning. And then tapes could be cut and spliced and their sense and content changed completely, and what was most incriminating preserved.

  His head nodded on his chest and he thought that he would soon fall asleep, and yet he mustn’t do that. He rose and went to the bathroom and splashed cold water over his face, and then very quickly returned again. By this time Linda seemed to him to be lying nearer the telephone, as if she had wakened up, and then sensing him coming back had pretended to go to sleep again. He must watch her, he must not sleep.