by Lynn Brock
‘Whalley’s going away again, he tells me,’ said Mr Knayle, eyeing Mr Ridgeway’s pipe and trying to think that others were entitled to smoke gurgling pipes if it helped to make their lives a little happier. ‘Going to Bournemouth.’
‘Um,’ grunted Mr Ridgeway.
‘A very tragic thing happened at the club,’ said Mr Knayle. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you since. A very intimate friend of mine—a man called Housall—dropped dead—well, practically at my feet. Quite a young man—my own age. A charming chap. Gave us all a tremendous shock, I needn’t tell you. Though, of course, if they had the choice, I suppose most people would be glad to die that way. I’ve often wondered—the majority of people who die in the ordinary ways—pneumonia or cancer or diabetes, or so on—at the last moment, do they … er … do they realise that they’re going to die—or are they usually unconscious?’
‘Oh, usually,’ yawned Mr Ridgeway.
‘It’s the pass-over that’s such a curious thing to think about,’ said Mr Knayle. ‘The sudden change. Now, Charlie Housall was putting his arm into the sleeve of his overcoat when he died. I suppose he was thinking about putting his arm into the sleeve of his overcoat—and then he was dead. One … er … one can’t imagine the actual pass-over. I mean—have you ever thought about—about what’s on the other side, Ridgeway?’
Mr Ridgeway laughed harshly.
‘Thought about it? I’ve thought about it for eleven years, anyhow. Nothing, I think personally.’ His fingers groped in a waistcoat pocket and took out a little metal case. He shook it, looked at it, and then replaced it in its pocket. ‘Some day, or some night, I hope I’ll feel sure about it. I always keep these little beggars handy, in case— But, it’s funny—at the last moment I always funk it. Why? You’re quite satisfied with Harvey Knayle, aren’t you? I’ll bet you can’t think of anything you’d sooner be.’
Mr Knayle’s blue eyes had remained fixed up on his guest’s waistcoat speculatively. ‘What is it?’ he asked at length.
‘Cyanide of potassium.’
‘Oh. Very quick, isn’t it?’
‘A minute or so. A long time, a minute, though, Knayle. And you might have to start all over again at the end of it.’
‘Well,’ smiled Mr Knayle, ‘I hope I shall start with a new set of toenails. Mine have got into a perfectly horrible state. Gout, I suppose.’
They talked about toenails and Mr Ridgeway yawned and suggested linseed oil and shambled towards the door, picking up the ‘Rules of Chess’ as he passed, opening it, and dropping it on the table again. He halted at the head of his little flight of steps when Mr Knayle’s hall-door had shut with a bright ‘Good-night,’ and looked up at the stars.
They were very large and bright and they had come nearer to watch. They seemed to him to be quivering with impatience for some ending. It came into his mind suddenly that he would set off into the darkness as he was, in his slippers and without a hat, and walk out along those long miles of road to Camphill and do it there, in company, with the impatient stars watching him. He would never do it alone; he knew that now. But she was out there. The air that held her dust would envelope him with her forgiveness until he fell. He would find courage for that minute—think of nothing whatever—just count ‘One—two—three—four—’
But he could never walk ten miles now. And when he got out there he would take out his little case and funk it again, as he had always done. And then there would be ten miles to walk back—in slippers and without a hat. He might meet a policeman and have to answer questions—say who he was and where he lived.
As he turned slowly to go down to his hall-door, feeling for his keys, the outside staircase passed across his view. Big boots—Rather curious that he should have noticed the bigness of a pair of boots on that particular night. Maddening little chap, Knayle—always changing the subject. Begun to think about having to die evidently—wondering if there wouldn’t be some way to dodge it. Ah well, the stoat would get him in the end, fasten on his little neck and pull him down.
But not a bad little chap in his way.
Mr Knayle sighed faintly as he returned to his sitting-room; thinking of others was rather uphill work. He came to a pause before his writing-desk and picked up a letter which he had received that morning.
Deepford Residential Hotel,
Guildford,
Nov. 17, 1931.
DEAR HARVEY,—Many thanks for the birds which arrived quite safely. Your friends the Prossips have left, under a cloud of some sort. No one seems to know exactly what the cloud was made of, but some of the hotel’s crockery was mixed up in it. We all miss Mr Prossip’s eyeglass so much. Tolly Duckett’s widow is living in Guildford; she comes up to feed with us sometimes. A perfectly sweet thing; everyone here adores her. Not a red, and a small boy—the very image of poor old Tolly. A lot of the people we met here last winter have come back this year, and we shall probably stay on until the spring. Do run up for a weekend some time. Bill says do, too.—Yrs., GRACE FARNOLD.
Mr Knayle put down the letter and looked round the sitting-room. It was filled with the reek of Mr Ridgeway’s pipe and held no comfort or significance whatever. He was simply standing there, boxed up by four walls—a funny little two-legged thing decaying under its funny little clothes, without use or purpose.
Why not run up to Guildford for a week? The place was evidently quite cheerful and comfortable; the Farnolds wouldn’t have gone back there if it hadn’t been. And the Prossips had left. There would be a lot of young people there, of course—but one would have to learn not to flinch—to accept the fact that life was theirs. Mr Knayle decided to turn the matter over, wrote the words ‘Linseed oil’ on a memorandum block and went to bed. It would be interesting to see if linseed oil would loosen that hard stuff.
Hopgood was also thinking of oil just then. He was sitting on the edge of his bed, pulling off his socks and looking at a photograph which stood on his mantelpiece beside the alarm clock and which he had found in Mr Whalley’s rubbish-bin that afternoon. He still carried the bin down to the front garden on Mondays and Thursdays, because he had felt that he would like to go on doing it, and that afternoon it had been so full of torn paper that the lid wouldn’t sit down properly. When he had raised the lid he had seen the photograph lying on top of the papers and had slipped it into his pocket, though it wasn’t at all a good likeness of poor little Mrs Whalley and was badly stained with oil of some sort in one corner. When he wound up his alarm clock at night it would remind him of the good old days down at Whanton when half-crowns were plentiful. He was wondering whether methylated spirit would remove the oil in the corner.
The photograph was actually an enlarged snapshot of one of Mrs Whalley’s fellow V.A.D.’s at Ducey Court, and Hopgood failed to get the oil off it. But for quite a long time he thought about half-crowns every night while he undressed.
CHAPTER XI
1
THE little old car took ten hours to do the journey to Guildford, going by Odiham and Farnham. There was not a square inch of it without its own tireless squeak or squeal or rattle or jingle, each with its own tempo, indifferent to the chattering growl and grind of the engine. Everything passed it. Uphill it stood still while everything leaped over the crest. But it churned on and on, hour after hour milestone after milestone, bent on its work relentlessly. Good little old car—on and on and on. No hurry—let them go by, swishing and swooping. Whalley sang snatches of war songs sometimes. Another milestone—fifty-three miles more. Fifty-three miles more to churn and churn—steadily, steadily, round the curve, up the hill, down the hill, through the village, past the post-office, under the bridge, round the curve. Another milestone—good little old car.
At two o’clock on the following afternoon the car took up position some fifty yards from the entrance of the Deepford against the kerb at the opposite side of the road. Whalley sat in it at his ease, reading and lighting cigarette after cigarette. But at half-past three he folded his newspaper and drove away with a
cluck of impatience. It was a Tuesday and the Blue Baby Austin had failed to come out through the gateway. Now it would not come until Thursday.
But it would come on Thursday.
On Thursday he waited until four o’clock. It was raining heavily and the dilapidated hood split while he was putting it up. His newspaper was a sodden rag when at last its advertisements became intolerable. But she would come on Saturday.
At three o’clock on Saturday a policeman passed close beside the car, glancing back at its front number plate, and paused at the cross-roads to make an entry in his notebook. Whalley’s nerves whirred an alarm. But the policeman had not passed previously since the car had taken up its station and could not have known how long it had stood there. The entry in his notebook had had no reference to the car whatever. Whalley resumed his newspaper tranquilly.
It was not until the Thursday of the following week that a growing suspicion became a certainty. He rang up the Deepford and inquired whether Mr Prossip was in.
‘Mr Prossip and his family went away last week,’ a curt voice answered.
‘Oh? Have they left Guildford?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
A violent attack of dizziness assailed him as he replaced the receiver and for some minutes he stood leaning against the side of the call-box, mustering up sufficient self-control to face the bustling street again. His plan had crumbled. The last traces of that quiet road had vanished and there was no new picture to go round and round with an outline always a little blacker and clearer and surer. He had had his chance and he had botched it—failed, as he had always failed, except by the merest accident. And now, what? Which way to turn when he shut the door of the call-box and had to decide whether to go up the street or down it? It was impossible that, in over a week, he should have seen none of the Prossips if they were still in Guildford. He had seen none of them; they had escaped.
But, as he neared the little hotel in North Street where he had stayed the first night of his previous visit, he saw Prossip come out, insert his monocle in his eye solemnly, and walk very slowly towards the head of the street. Prossip had evidently been refreshing himself somewhat incautiously in the bar of the hotel and swayed from side to side of the footpath as he walked. Finally he decided to leave the footpath and walk in the gutter, completely absorbed in the effort to keep a straight line. There was no difficulty in keeping his orange-hued tweeds in sight. Whalley became incautious and was only some ten yards behind him when Mrs Prossip came round a corner and, after a swift glance, grabbed her husband by the arm and endeavoured to pull him on to the footpath. There was no time to stop or cross to the other side of the road. As Whalley passed them, looking straight before him, he was aware that the two figures in the gutter had ceased to struggle petulantly and had turned towards him. Prossip’s booming growl said, ‘Well, I’m damned.’
But in twenty steps he was completely sure that the Prossips had paid no attention whatever to his passing. Their arms had simply ceased to struggle just then and Prossip had decided to return to the footpath of his own free will. He had said, ‘Well, I’m damned,’ simply because his wife had grabbed at his arm in the street and attempted to make him walk on the footpath so that people wouldn’t notice that he was tight. Whalley looked back and saw the orange tweeds following Mrs Prossip sulkily down the side-road from which she had emerged. They had not seen him.
A little distance down the road—its name, he saw, was Burford Avenue—they entered one of the respectable, dull little two-storeyed houses, when Prossip had dropped his walking-stick twice in the effort to find his key. Whalley went past the house presently and saw the name ‘Hindhead’ on a plate affixed to the gate of the little dank front garden. A violin was wailing in one of the upper rooms. They were all in there, safe again.
A dull, ugly little road of little stupid, useless people. Thousands and thousands of roads like that in thousands of dull, ugly towns and cities. Ugly respectable women strealing to the town and strealing back with parcels. Husbands in offices in office coats and cuff-protectors. Perambulators in front gardens. Bird cages in windows. Imitation lace curtains. A smell of cabbage and cat and furniture polish in the hall. All useless—no plan.
Lodgings … Perhaps some poor devil in there with a writing-block—lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting, lifting. He was still thinking of lifting little heavy weights. But there had been a gap … A rather pretty woman with a slight squint had come out of the lodging-house and was looking at him while she opened the garden gate. But he hadn’t seen her come out of the house or come down the garden, though he was looking into the garden. And he wasn’t moving—he had stopped and was holding on to the railings. He went on uneasily. That sort of thing wouldn’t do.
By the end of the following week his new picture was quite definite. Some fifty yards below ‘Hindhead’ a short narrow laneway ran back from Burford Avenue between high walls, and led to a little cul-de-sac which turned off at a right-angle to it at its further end. In there, in a small rectangular space, shut in from all view by the walls of the surrounding gardens, a diminutive shed of corrugated iron stood amidst a collection of evil-smelling rubbish heaps. No one went up the lane except Marjory Prossip. A little before half-past seven on Tuesday and Thursday and Saturday evenings, her Baby Austin had turned into it from the road and disappeared at its further end. One could hear it stop—hear the padlock of the shed being unlocked—hear the Baby being driven in. One would run up the lane, then, while she was switching off the lights, turning off the petrol, and getting out, penned in in the narrow space between the car and the side of the shed. One would reach the doors of the shed just as she leaned into the car to take out her violin-case—pull them to as one crept in. Her ugly white face would come out from beneath the hood. Her torch would swing up and see—
But every sound must be timed—every move reduced to exact schedule—everything as sure as the snap of a lock. He decided to take his car back to Rockwood; there was no necessity to follow the Blue Baby now, and without a car to think about … afterwards … everything would be simpler and safer. The Guildford police took a disquieting interest in noisy engines.
The simplicity and compactness of his new setting gave him satisfaction; it was all seen in a glance and confused by no distracting irrelevance. Each sound, too, was sharply definite—each move a matter of seconds.
The little old car churned back, squeaking and rattling and growling—mile after mile—round the curve—under the railway-bridge—past the post-office—up the hill—through the village—down the hill—another milestone. Good little old car—a mile nearer.
The garage at which the car had been stabled hitherto had been at an inconvenient distance from the flat and, having decided to accept Knayle’s offer and the key which had accompanied it, he had closed his account there before his departure for Guildford. Knayle’s garage was empty and, as he drove into it, his lamps lighted up a shallow box which lay in one of its inner corners. He got out and stood considering its contents for a little space before he picked up a heavy, short-handled hammer, whose battered head stuck out from a jumble of rusty tyre-levers, old spoke-brushes, discarded oil rags and other miscellaneous rubbish.
In that narrow space between the wall and the Baby’s hood one would have very little room; one would want something that would do its work with a half-swing. He swung the hammer tentatively and then held it to a lamp to examine the name stamped on its head. ‘Vulc—’ and a blur. Oh yes—Vulcan. Evidently not used. And in any case it would go back into the box. Gloves—there were some old gloves in the …
Krank … Gelump.
He was leaning over, looking down. Gradually his dizziness gathered swimming planes of dimness into recognition. He was bending over the railing of the outside staircase, looking down into the little area of the basement flat, and holding his suitcase between his body and the rail. Perplexity held him motionless while he strove to understand how he had come there, and why he was leaning over the rail. It was o
nly when the suitcase slipped a little that one of his hands told him that it had just dropped something.
A robed figure appeared below him, silhouetted against the light of a hurriedly opened door.
‘Hullo, Whalley,’ said Mr Ridgeway. ‘I thought I heard you going up. Dropped some of your property into my area?’
‘Yes,’ Whalley replied, and began to descend towards him. ‘Don’t bother to come out.’
‘No bother, no bother,’ Mr Ridgeway yawned, striking a match. ‘I’ve got it.’
When he had shambled up his little flight of steps and handed over Whalley’s hammer, he turned and shambled down them again quickly because he had left a saucepan of milk on the kitchen gas-ring and he was afraid that it might boil over.
‘You’ve been away, haven’t you?’ he asked before he shut his hall-door. There was no reply from above. But he knew that Whalley had been away and, shutting the door, shambled on to the kitchen, where he discovered to his annoyance that the saucepan had boiled over. Whenever he boiled anything in a saucepan something always took his mind off it and it boiled over.
Whalley left his suitcase and the hammer in the flat and then went back to the garage. The doors stood open and, inside, the little old car was churning with all its lights on.
2
Mr Knayle went up to Guildford by road on a very raw day and caught a slight chill during the journey. As he crossed the Deepford’s lounge towards the fireplace at which Mrs Farnold sat toasting her hands, he sneezed loudly and very nearly ejected his plate. Every head turned sharply; a hostile and condemning silence fell, and after a moment someone tittered. He was a little pink when he reached Mrs Farnold’s armchair.
She flapped a handkerchief at him and enveloped him in an atmosphere of eucalyptus—a smell which he had always disliked acutely.
