John Brown's Body

by A. L. Barker

  “Who said anything about wanting? Everyone has a double, it’s a freak of Nature.”

  “I think it was a horribly unkind and unnecessary thing to say.”

  “Some people think he was clever to get away with it. I suppose he was.”

  “Unkind of you, I mean.”

  Ralph smiled. “Of course you wouldn’t fancy being married to the twin of a murderer.”

  “Please don’t mention it to Emmy, it would upset her.”

  “Being sister by marriage to a murderer’s twin? Oh come, it would amuse her.”

  “She knew Elvie Whybrow. They were at school together.”

  It was the last thing he expected. “Well, that’s a coincidence.”

  “Elvie was older, already a young lady. The senior girls used to take Bible Groups for the first year children and Emmy was in her Group.”

  “So she’d know what John Brown looked like? She’d have been interested in the case?”

  “I don’t think she knew anything about him. We were still in India when it happened and we didn’t see all the English papers. She’s never said you look like him –” Bertha was struck with alarm. “She hasn’t, has she? It wasn’t Emmy who said that?”

  “No, it was someone who actually knew Brown in the flesh.”

  “He had a dirty mind – oh, not just for nasty jokes – really dirty. He thought of certain things and made them possible –” she was thermal pink, poor Bertha, with shyness – “and between women like that. They were devoted to each other. And Elvie was sweet and gentle, she’d have made a beautiful nun. What he did, what he made her do to her sister – she couldn’t have done that to an animal.”

  “She was the one,” said Ralph, “who couldn’t bear to see flies on flypapers. It must have been some brain-washing.”

  “Washing? In vileness? In corruption? He blacked her.”

  “Don’t fret, it was all a long time ago.”

  “It’s the worst thing I ever heard. I thought, I still do, if that could happen, there can’t be any hope for any of us.”

  Her eyes brimmed and Ralph put his arms round her. “It couldn’t, of course, not just like that. Depend on it, the newspapers left something out or put something in, a bit of embroidery here and there.”

  “Embroidery? I can’t bear it when you talk like this!”

  “When I talk like what?”

  “No-one’s ever mentioned it before.” She held away and looked at him through tears. “I couldn’t bear it if you were like that man.”

  “Nor could anyone else, they’d have me in a criminal asylum.”

  He had asked himself what became of John Brown, where did he go after the acquittal and after that holiday wave? Where did he take his memories and what did they afford him – pleasure, pride, remorse? Not remorse, not likely. He had got something out of his system at Casimir Terrace and probably he didn’t need to think about it again. Some purge, thought Ralph, some system.

  “Who would say such a wicked cruel thing? No-one I know!” cried Bertha.

  It seemed logical to suppose he was dead. Logical? Tidier, anyway, not to have two of them around.

  “What is it, dear? What’s the matter?”

  Mouldering in the grave, that was logic. “I’m a fool, Bert –” he couldn’t keep an exultant note out of his voice. “But that’s all I am.”

  “Something’s the matter, I knew it as soon as I saw you. Please tell me!”

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “Is it the money?”

  “What money?”

  “I don’t want you to pretend to me about money – or about anything.”

  “Don’t worry.” He almost added, “You must take me as I am,” but he wasn’t on offer to her.

  “Whatever happens to the money can’t make any difference to us, it’s not capable of making a difference. And you aren’t a fool,” she said strongly, “no-one can tell what stocks and shares are going to do.”

  “The money’s all right, it’ll come back to us like a homing pigeon.”

  He hadn’t thought about it for days. He recalled it now – the writing of a cheque on their joint account and paying the cash into the firm’s account – as the action of another person.

  “Why did you start talking about that creature? Of all creatures? Dogs, rats, jackals are cleaner and sweeter than him –”

  “Forget it. It was a joke, some fellow in a bar thought it was funny.”

  “How can I forget it? You – and John Brown –”

  “You want to know what I did with that two hundred? I’ll tell you – I invested it in the firm.”

  “In the firm?”

  Perhaps she really preferred to save up her questions and put them one at a time, perhaps she liked to be ready for the answers, perhaps voluntary answers, out of context, baffled and did not enlighten her.

  “In Picker, Gill, yes. You see it’s a private transaction, nothing to interest the brokers. You’ll just have to wait for me to tell you what there is to tell. And that will be nothing for a long time. It isn’t the open market, dividends won’t go up and down like a yo-yo.”

  “I thought you said that strikes and politics and wars would affect the price.”

  “I was generalising.” He could see that she was hurt. When she felt hurt she crumpled as if slack had suddenly been let into her skin. “Well, what did you want, a game of snakes and ladders?”

  “I wanted to share something with you. That would have been real shares. Of course it was silly of me.”

  How much more self-condemnation would she take? If he let her, surely she would take it all? If he waited, would he hear her blame herself for everything, thus complementing Emmy who did not blame herself at all?

  “It was a nice thought,” he said, “about the real shares.”

  “Does it make you a Director?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Why else would you do it?”

  Why indeed? Ralph was tempted to tell her, “You have to be full of yourself and of no-one else, and you have to be frightened, frightened of Dog Tray with his Flower Boy balanced on his nose.”

  “Let’s just say it was a declaration of faith.”

  9

  The weekend over, he needed to go straight back to Marise. “Be as the well, bottomless, not as the pump that needs priming.” But he was the pump and the priming he needed was sight of her.

  He had to wait through eight and a half hours of gestures of work and then when he got home to Lilliput Lodge, Tomelty was there. She had arranged to let Ralph know – “I don’t like him,” he had said, “I don’t want to see him” – by putting Barbra-Bear in the window when Tomelty was at home. And there was the thing, lolling against the pane. “Why don’t you like Jack?” Ralph had told her, “Because he’s your husband.”

  He went up to his flat. When he opened the door the cat was already watching his face with its split eyes. God knew for how long and from how many miles away it had watched him.

  He had asked her what Tomelty said about him. Tomelty could say whatever suited his purpose and Ralph felt desperate at the idea of such opportunity. “Don’t you see?” he had said to Marise. “He’s made you believe I’m some sort of maniac. That’s how it all started.”

  The cat winked at him, a double wink with both eyes. He went down to the hall and looked at their nameplate.

  She was locked up inside ‘Mr and Mrs Tomelty’, the door was shut as if never to open. Perhaps it was bolted? Everything was so quiet, if they weren’t talking – and he was sure they weren’t – if they weren’t eating or sleeping, what were they doing? Tomelty, shut in with his lawful wedded wife, could be doing any lawful wedded thing.

  Ralph blundered out of the front door of the house into Madame Belmondo who was coming up the steps.

  “Mr Shilling, you’re the one I want to see. I must speak to you about the cat –”

  “Damn the cat.” He went on down the steps, lifting his hat to her.

 
The shade of Tomelty was at the Pilot but it was small use going elsewhere because Marise would go too, and Tomelty by association, the association of the worm and the bud.

  Ralph stood at the bar and swallowed his first drink as if it were bitter medicine “Your friend is here,” said Inez, and he would have been glad to see Tomelty since it would have meant that he was not with Marise. “Over there.” She pointed to the young woman in dark glasses. “She says you’re acquainted.”

  “I hope she’ll be happy ever after.”

  “After what?”

  “After she gets out of her bad patch.”

  The steak-eaters had spread along the bar, Ralph was on the fringe of them. They were noisier and there seemed to be more of them and they looked individually larger.

  “Give me a double before you go,” he said as she turned to their end of the bar.

  “Are you in a bad patch too?”

  “I’m in the best patch I was ever in.”

  Was that all he would receive, a patch of time, a patch of Marise? It was humanly impossible: he had to accept that there had been a beginning – but once begun there could be no end.

  “What about this one? Here’s a suitable case for surmise.”

  A pair of spectacles appeared beside him, two mighty black ‘O’s’ riding a nose.

  “Cashier in a bank, local branch.”

  “Real estate. I see him sticking his penknife into windowsills.”

  “What about a doctor?”

  “He’d be taking surgery right now.”

  “Excuse us, old dear.” With the spectacles went sandy pink hair and freckles. “Tony Ginsberg swears he can tell a man’s job by looking at him. You won’t mind if he has a crack at yours?”

  All the steak-eating faces were turned on Ralph. He was part of their evening, along with their gin and tonics, their whisky and water, their Manikins and Patellas.

  “It’s only for a giggle.”

  “And it’s clean.”

  “Let’s buy you a drink. Fair’s fair, if we’re going to have your hair down. Whisky?”

  “Rum,” said Ralph. “Thank you.”

  “It’s scientific, you know. Two-fifths science, two-fifths common and five-fifths luck. Well, you want more than one whole for this game.”

  “Hendon’s my name,” said the man with the mighty O’s. “Of Style and Hendon, the car people.” He pointed to a man who kept flicking his nose with his thumb and forefinger. “This is Tony.” Now that Ralph was in the thick of them he saw that the whole group was alive with such inconclusive gestures, like a bush full of sparrows.

  “How is it done? What are the two-fifths science?”

  Ginsberg smiled. “I only do what any charlatan with a glass ball does.”

  “I don’t think there’s anything to show what I am.” Ralph turned over his hands. “No corns or callouses, no sawdust, no soot, not even a Union button.”

  “You’re not a doctor or a dentist, and you’re not in real estate or cars. Your hands aren’t right and, if you’ll pardon my saying so, you haven’t the image for big spending. It’s all pretty obvious, you see.”

  “What’s wrong with my image?”

  “Old dear, this is the truth game,” said Hendon.

  Ralph sipped his rum and a wave of laughter rolled around inside him. They little knew that they were trying to read two faces.

  “There’s more than one version of the truth,” he said. “I can see more than one in these mirrors and they’re all true likenesses.” Steak eating had given them similarity and no finesse, he could see now that it was bunch-strength he had coveted across the bar. “Exactly how many is a mathematical calculation based on the area of glass –”

  “No,” said Ginsberg.

  “Assuming that the mirror area on one wall is eighty by forty square feet, from where I’m standing I see myself fifty-eight-thousand times. Of course after the first few times the image is blurred and reduces out of recognition –”

  “From where you stand you see three images of yourself.”

  “Three?”

  “An image of an image plus one reversal.”

  Hendon pushed another rum into Ralph’s hand. “Tony’s by way of a Brain.”

  “Alright, but there are more than three versions of the truth and a reversal of truth is a lie.”

  Someone was getting impatient. “Come on, Tony, what’s his line?”

  Ginsberg flicked his nose. “He’s something to do with death.”

  “An undertaker?”

  “That’s it, I recognise him, he packed my auntie up last week.”

  “Is it right, old dear?”

  Ralph asked Ginsberg, “What made you say that?”

  “Call it intuition.”

  “Killing unlimited,” Emmy had said. Looking round, he was surprised to see that steak didn’t keep them altogether confident. One or two were eyeing him as if they feared they might get their trousers splashed.

  “You could say I’m something to do with death. But I’m not an undertaker.”

  “A butcher?” suggested Hendon.

  Ralph shook his head. “You could say my business is selling death, equally you could say it’s selling life. Everything’s bought and sold –” but even to them, especially to them, because they would never hear it otherwise, he had to speak the truth. “Almost everything –” Though they weren’t capable of knowing what the exception was, they were a pack and had no use for exceptions. “Sometimes death is a benefit. We benefit the community, we sell death to further life. How many of you can say as much?” He said to Hendon, “People don’t need cars to live.”

  “They do, by God. What other reason is there?”

  “You’re in insurance,” said Ginsberg.

  “Why do you say that?” Ralph asked again and Ginsberg shrugged. He reminded Ralph of Emmy, Emmy and Ginsberg had something in common. And the others reminded him of tail-waving dogs waiting for a game.

  “Suppose two men have the same face and the same body? Look the same exactly, I mean. What happens then?” He said to Ginsberg, “I’ve seen what happens. Do you do water-divining too?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Hendon. “Just tell us, yes or no, is Tony right?”

  Ralph thought that he should throw a ball for them and whistle and slap his knee to encourage them. He wished that Marise were with him to share the joke, their John Brown joke. No-one else could share it, being so private made it so rich.

  “It’s not mouldering in the grave,” he said, “it’s marching on and this is the body that’s in insurance.”

  “What the hell’s he talking about?”

  “Tony’s right.”

  “Glory, glory allelujah,” said Ralph.

  “He’s high.”

  “On two rums?”

  “And the rest. He’s been drinking here all evening.”

  “You’re not driving, old dear, are you?”

  Ralph slapped his chest. “He drives, I don’t. I’ve been drinking but he shouldn’t be drunk.” He felt he should try with them, they should be given a chance. “There’s no copyright in faces, d’you see? They’re not like fingerprints, people have doubles, they really do, and the differences aren’t visible to the naked eye. You don’t look at faces with microscopes and callipers.”

  “The one time Tony boobed was when the girl turned out to be a bricklayer’s mate.”

  “If there was a face for the job,” explained Ralph, “fishmongers would all look like him.” He pointed to a man wearing a brown raincoat and carefully fitting his pint tankard between the loose ends of his moustache.

  “They do, old dear,” said Hendon. “And car salesmen all look like me.”

  “Someone looks like me exactly,” said Ralph. “Microscope, callipers, you wouldn’t find a millimetre of difference between us. And he sells ant-powders.”

  “Where?”

  “Anywhere.”

  “Where is this man who looks like you?”

  “N
earer than you think. The point is, would you be right – you ought to be – if you said I sold ant powders and that man, the fishmonger, is a ladies’ hairdresser because somewhere is a man who looks like him who is a ladies’ hairdresser?”

  “He’s not a fishmonger,” said Ginsberg, “or a hairdresser. He’s a policeman.”

  They all looked at the man and no-one smiled when Ralph suggested, “A Keystone Cop?” It reminded him of something, a tune or a game or a ritual of his childhood, the old ring-o’-roses ritual.

  “Go on, Tony, tell us his force, and his number.”

  “I don’t believe it,” said Ralph, “I don’t believe that’s a policeman.”

  “So find out.”

  “Find out?”

  “Go and ask him.”

  The children used to stand round and the ritual was to load the boy in the middle and the purpose was to leave only a crowning absurdity for the victim to break out by.

  “I couldn’t do that.”

  “It’s your place to, you’re the unbeliever.”

  “He wouldn’t tell me. I mean, perhaps he’s disguised – he won’t want to be known.”

  “Then watch for his reaction. You can do that, can’t you?”

  A crowning absurdity. Ralph turned away.

  “Afraid he’ll book you, old dear?”

  “Inez! Bring him a whisky to get his nerve up.”

  “Make it a double.”

  “If Mr Brown wants another drink he’ll ask for it.”

  “Challenge him so that we can all hear.”

  “We don’t care how you do it, twist his arm, threaten his wife, but make him tell you the truth.”

  “What did you call me?” Ralph asked Inez.

  “Brown’s your name, isn’t it?”

  “Who said so?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “But you must remember!”

  Inez shrugged. “I hear a lot when I’m not listening.”

  “You’re trying to back out, old Brown dear.”

  “It was Jack Tomelty, it must have been.” Ralph had a clear vision of Tomelty’s string-tight grin. “It’s his idea of a joke.”

  “Is it funny to be called Brown?”

  “He should have been called yellow.”

  “Turd and turd alike,” said someone.