by Joan Fleming
He’d done it now, though; what was wrong with her, he wondered? It must be she’d dropped dead from the shock and that was that. And he didn’t feel inclined to open the bathroom door to find out, in fact, he knew for sure he was never going to open that door; the last corpse he had seen, only the other day, had been too utterly terrible; he was not going to look at any more dead people, thanks.
He gave her one more chance, kicking and shouting and banging on the bathroom door; no answer. Nothing. Nix.
So now he would have to be off, get out of the country as quickly as possible. Drive to Australia, that was what. Drive there!
He could start as soon as he had collected his money from the bank.
He glanced at his wristwatch, too late now, but there was still time to go and get his talisman from Madame Joan. He went to the bathroom door, just once again, and kicked it. “I’m off to Australia!” he shouted, “so do you hear that, you bloody bitch?”
Dead silence, of course. God! how easily people died; how miserably fragile was an old woman’s neck, a girl’s neck, any neck, it seemed. And that girl had such a damned long neck, it was one of the things that had attracted him. So long that it broke too easy, that was it. He’d broken her neck—clickety-click!
“Bye-bye, then!” he screamed and slammed the door after him as he went out.
The afternoon had fled past, it was five minutes to five when he rang Madame Joan’s bell; the blonde with the pyramid hair opened the door to him: “Yes?”
“Could Madame Joan see me for a minute?”
“Have you an appointment?”
Of course he hadn’t, any fool could see that. He only wanted his tiger’s tooth back.
“No, I saw her this morning, I left something. I’ve called for it.”
“What was it?”
“A little …” he couldn’t think of a sensible name for it, he felt a fool saying he’d called for his tiger’s tooth. “A trinket,” he gobbled, “a small thing which I value for sentimental reasons.”
“I’ll go and see.”
“Thanks.” He didn’t get asked in so he had to stand in the open doorway, on first one leg, then the other.
She returned: “Madame says what kind of small thing?”
He frowned deeply and darkly; so she was going to be like that, was she?
“A bloody tiger’s tooth,” he returned angrily, “Indian, silver-mounted.”
She went away and returned quickly.
“Madame says she hasn’t seen a tiger’s tooth, and she’s with a client now, I didn’t ought to disturb her …”
“You’ll go and bloody well disturb her again and ask her to give me back my tiger’s tooth!”
The fantastic creature rolled her eyes, asking her Maker for help and protection from this impossible creature. Madame herself came to the door this time, her face a mask of non-comprehension. “Young man,” she asked sternly, “what is the matter with you? Are you ill?”
Apologetically, he explained. She was probably the only person who had ever made him feel apologetic, almost humble.
She drew herself up with great dignity. “Young man, if I had found your … your whatever it is you have left, I would, of course, return it to you, as I have found nothing, I cannot return anything. Be reasonable, please!”
“On the window-sill …”
“You have left it somewhere else, not here!”
And because she was no ordinary person but an oracle he accepted her behaviour meekly, thanking her and turning away. She shut the door, very gently, and took the tiger’s tooth out of her pocket, holding it in the palm of her hand and looking down at it, sadly perhaps. She slipped it back into her pocket, still holding it in her hand.
The receptionist was standing at the top of the stairs, looking quite put out.
“Don’t worry,” she said gently.
“I’m frightened of him,” the girl whimpered. “What shall I do if he comes again?”
“He won’t.”
“He will, I’m sure he will!”
Madame Joan shook her head. “He won’t, you know.” She walked upstairs towards her front parlour or consulting room where the client was patiently awaiting the resumption of her interrupted session.
She clutched the attractive object in her pocket; to have returned it to the young man would have been wasteful, as wilfully extravagant as throwing it out of a moving railway carriage window.
“He will not be back, you will see; it would have been extremely foolish of me to return his little toy, because he’s dying.”
The receptionist stood aside to let her pass. “One sunset from now, perhaps, two sunsets at the most … he will be dead.”
And because she never forgot the libation she felt she should always make to the gods, she added, like touching wood: “I think …”
She sat with her back against the bath, arms round her knees, chin on knees, starry-eyed at her own cleverness. A cleverness, of course, stemming from absolute confidence because her lover-boy Silas d’Ambrose would be cantering to her rescue, if not exactly upon a white charger, at least in his red MG. So if she kept absolutely quiet she would, between now and her rescue, reduce to a gibbering lunatic W. Sledge.
The self-congratulation was so glowing and fulsome that for well over an hour it blinded her to the stark but bitter little truth. She knew that W. Sledge had bifurcated and was also someone with a flat in the same block as his Mum and Dad, because he had told her so, in the first fine careless rapture of their acquaintanceship, before everything was spoiled by his clumsy and greedy bag-snatching. But now she could not remember discussing this detail with anybody; it happened, as it seemed, so long ago, so very much had taken place since, in short, she had forgotten it. Did Silas know? Did the Bogeys know? Did the police know?
At first there seemed to be a lot going on, people arriving, voices, people leaving. Then W. Sledge’s attack on the door, his evident hysteria and his departure, slamming the front door noisily. Australia? Ha ha! As if she would believe that! Then silence, and it was only after rather a lot of this absolutely dead silence that the questions came to her.
Within seconds she was drenched with sweat, the hair at the back of her neck wet and pricking, her pride in her own cleverness a punctured balloon. Perhaps he had it in mind to do a “collector” on her: the collector in the film was a schizophrenic who collected young girls, kept them locked up, as any collector keeps his treasure locked up.
She picked up a tin of bath cleaner and banged it against all four walls in turn; it made surprisingly little sound and had no effect whatever. To calm herself she turned on the bath water, undressed and had a bath. She felt better afterwards, fluffing out her short hair with her fingers and peering anxiously at herself in the looking-glass above the basin.
Then she heard him come in. She heard him come close to the bathroom door, so close he was almost breathing down the crack.
She shouted: “Well, have you finished your silly joke? I suppose you think you’re The Collector, do you? Well, it’s a flop!”
He clung to the door, gasping with relief. He had had to come back, there was nowhere else to go. He had wanted to make enquiries as to bookings on cross-channel car ferries, but there had been no time after he had been to pick up his tiger’s tooth from Madame Joan, everywhere was closing, it was five-thirty. Much as he did not want to, he had to go back to his pad and he intended to pack everything he wished to take and leave the place, never to return.
But how marvellously quickly, minute to minute, his prospects changed! He knew that it was an immense relief to discover that she was not dead but his adjustment to the fact of her death had been complete for the past two hours and it was not only a shock but an annoyance to have to reverse everything yet again.
“Open the door please,” she begged. “I’ve been in here long enough.”
He stood there, leaning against the door jamb, still slightly breathless from shock; he didn’t answer because he couldn’t. His min
d crawled back to all the fine rolling phrases which he had turned over in his mind again and again; he was going to wear her down, intimidate her, tame and train her to obey, and a whole lot of other jabberwocky which he couldn’t for the life of him remember now; stern, powerful, W. Sledge-type things. And all he could do now was to gasp with relief.
He did not formulate the words, but he was grasping the misty idea that to keep up young-thuggery it was necessary to maintain one’s aims and ambitions, not to mess about and change, dither around. It was that Lady Bellhanger that had started it, with the gun and the open mouth. If he hadn’t had to deal with those two menaces he would never have lost his nerve like this. It wasn’t fair to have brought the gun into it; after all, he didn’t carry a gun. It was shocking to suddenly find yourself looking straight at the barrel of a gun, held by a dear old lady like that! It had been the root and cause of all his troubles, it had broken his nerve, caused him to lose confidence and to give way to his sickening weakness, his nerves.
She put her mouth close to the door: “Are you there, Sledgey? Open the door, there’s a dear, you’ve had your joke. You’ve won!”
He didn’t give way at once but a corpse in the bathroom and a quiet clearing out to the other side of the world was one thing and a real live girl, bolted into the bathroom whilst he made his getaway, was another. Of course, he could slip off and leave her to starve to death; the rent was paid for three months ahead, no one could want to get in and there was no reason for anyone to break down the doors, unless they suspected she was there, and how could they? The police had had their routine search, they would hardly need another so soon, or indeed, ever again.
But then, he liked her, so why should he think up such a cruel fate for her? She had never, in fact, done him any harm, or not much, so why should he leave her to a cruel, slow, slow starving to death?
He unbolted the top bolt he had so carefully fixed into place and after a long pause for decision he shot back the bottom one. He went into the living-room and lay down on the sofa, lighting a cigarette and looking at his feet resting on the arm of the sofa. He waited for her to come out and he did not even turn his head when she came into the room.
“We could start again,” she said briskly, because she had made up her mind, “from where we left off.”
“In what way?”
“When I first met you in the coffee bar; I liked you, that’s why I went in your Jag to Maidenhead. Since you snatched my baggage in that stupid way and then brought it back, in an even more stupid way, our friendship hasn’t progressed at all.”
“ ‘Hasn’t progressed at all,’ ” he mimicked, he loved the way she spoke.
“So what have you got on your mind for us now?”
“Will you come to Australia with me?”
“Yes,” she said boldly, falsely disarming. It was almost shocking, like stepping off a bottom stair that wasn’t there.
“Why?”
She shrugged.
“But why?”
“We might make a go of it!”
“I’ve looked at the map, we can travel nearly all the way overland, through Persia and Afghanistan, I know people who’ve been that way, hitch-hiking; none of them, that I know of, got themselves to Australia, they got taken up with India on the way.”
“Have you a passport?”
“Yep, have you?”
She nodded.
He stretched out his arms: “Come and kiss me then.”
“Oh no, not that!”
He scowled.
“I …” she paused, choosing her words, “I don’t feel that way towards you, honestly. But why worry? You’d have to grow out that ghastly black hair, to please me physically.”
“What if I did that?”
Again she shrugged.
“Now look, let’s get things straight. I can shove you in there again and bolt the door and pack up my things and go, and then where would you be?”
She shuddered involuntarily but, still bold, returned cheekily: “In there!”
“So I mean business. If you’re coming you’ll have to go to the Bogeys’ flat and get your traps and you have to do it on the understanding that I’ll kill you if you so much as open your mouth. I’ll watch the Bogeys’ flat until she’s gone out and then you’ll go … have they given you a key?”
They had.
“Then you’ll go in and get your things and if Mr. Bogey shouts, you won’t reply because if you do … well, you’ll know what will happen to you, and I mean it.” Then, after a pause, he said casually: “And where is Joe?”
“Yes, where?”
“You don’t know?”
“I’ve no idea. I didn’t want to ask the Bogeys, I felt they didn’t want me to, I should say. So there’s a snag to your plan; you may watch the flat and see Mrs. Bogey depart to work but what if Joe is back, or has been coming back home for food … or something?”
Yes, indeed, what then?
Neither of them spoke, he pressed out the cigarette stub and folded his arms.
She went very white, her lips were stiff, but she managed to control her voice when she said: “So you have killed Joe Bogey!”
No answer.
“That’s what everyone was frightened of; the Bogeys didn’t even mention his name, they’re too … oh, I don’t know.”
“Well,” W. Sledge gesticulated vaguely, “it was obvious, wasn’t it? It was either him or me!”
She gasped.
“He knew what happened that night in Kensington, it was only a matter of time before he came out with it, his parents would of made him go to the police because the police are after him, since they found his pullover on the spot. There’s more evidence over that Bellhanger thing against him than there is against me.”
“God!”
“As it happens, I’m getting careless, I’m slipping, and that’s why I’m getting out. It’s me nerves. I’ve had enough of it. I left my clothes what I wore that night in a carrier in the Bogeys’ flat; I didn’t mean to, of course, I was on my way out with them, down to the river, going to weight them down with bricks till they sank good and proper. So … that puts the Bogeys right in it, up to the back teeth, don’t it? I don’t wish old Pa Bogey any ill-will, he’s got enough to put up with. Much the best thing to do was remove Joe from trouble; his parents will never know, they’ll spend their lives thinking he’ll turn up, they won’t dare to go to the police with the carrier of clothes and … well, that’s it, isn’t it!”
“My God!”
She sat down in a low chair, clasping her arms round her knees and rocking herself slightly. Then she suddenly burst out crying, not sad slow tears but hysterical loud sobs, she got up and started to batter W. Sledge with her fists; he threw her off, resuming his nonchalant pose and she lay on the carpet, where he had thrown her, crying like a silly kid.
It irritated him. “Go on!” he shouted at last, “you don’t care all that much for Joe Bogey! You didn’t know him above a couple of days …” He wondered why she was not frightened of him; he was frightened of himself, he thought fleetingly of his name going down to posterity: The Monster of Fiery Beacon.
After what seemed a long time she quietened down, sat up, mopped her face with a grubby handkerchief and wrapped her arms round her knees once more. “I love Joe Bogey, he was kind and sweet, he helped me and made everything seem to be coming all right for me. He was nice, and I love Pa and Ma Bogey too, like they were my own family, only much more.” She gave a deep, shuddering, after-crying sigh: “This will kill them when they know. Haven’t they enough trouble, poor dears?”
It was an extreme anti-climax when W. Sledge remarked that this information would teach her, if she had been in any doubt, as to what sort of person she was dealing with.
What next?
The north sky had cleared, the sun was shining, it was a lovely evening. W. Sledge’s restlessness took over. “Let’s go and get summat to eat,” he suggested in the absence of any activity whatever on the part of F
rances, who simply sat, tears running down her cheeks, absently licking them off her face with the tip of her tongue and sniffing extensively.
“Is Mrs. Bogey back at work?” he asked, and when she didn’t reply he repeated the question.
“You’re either going to play ball … or you’re not,” he complained. “If you’re going away with me you’ll want your traps, if not … not.”
She said: “I don’t know what you think I am, you’ve just told me you’ve killed your best friend and then you think I’m going to come away with you. What’s the matter with you?”
Since he didn’t answer she answered for him: “There’s too many things the matter with you to be able to answer that one, isn’t there? I’m frightened of you, all right, I’m terribly, terribly frightened of you …”
He turned his head and looked at her with some curiosity.
“… and yet, on the other hand, I’m not.”
“Why not?”
“Why not?” she repeated, to mark time, “why not?”
“Why not?” he shouted, adding: “Damn you!”
“Because,” she began slowly and thoughtfully, “you’re not all that bad; when we met in the coffee bar, I thought you were nice and those things I thought were nice, still are … nice.”
“What, for instance?”
“I mean … you do look at a girl as though she was a person and not only a sex-pot and …”
“Go on …”
“And it was quite decent of you to take me out in your car, even though you did try to scare me, and succeeded. And you didn’t only take me out for sheer … sheer sex.”
“Oh, didn’t I? You’re wrong there, you clever little tick. I did, but I changed my mind, remembering I had a job on that night.”
