Transmigration

by J. T. McIntosh

  "Hello, Sheila," said Fletcher, ignoring Gerry. He had not seen her since the day on the estuary. Now, close up, he saw she was a rather pretty girl with wild eyes.

  In his old manner, Gerry released a flood of profanity. The gist of his remarks was that Baudaker was supposed to be away for a week, and what was he doing back on Monday night?

  Sheila backed away. Unlike Gerry in his present mood, she found something in Baudaker to make her afraid.

  "Gerry," said Fletcher softly, "you seem to be running away."

  "You're damn right I'm going away. And you're not going to stop me."

  "In the ordinary way I wouldn't try. You're perfectly free to go, naturally. I don't even mind your taking the car, if you have a driving license. Have you, by the way?"

  "Sheila has."

  "Oh well, that's all right. But there's something else, isn't there?"

  "What the hell do you mean?"

  "It's not just a simple matter of going away. What have you done?"

  Recklessly Gerry said: "If you really want to know . . . "

  "Gerry!" Sheila exclaimed warningly.

  "If you really want to know, I've taken Ł300 from the shop."

  Fletcher nodded, unsurprised. "Very clever. A master plan."

  His sarcasm had always penetrated Gerry's otherwise thick hide very easily.

  Gerry flushed. "It was easy. I've never taken anything before. They trust me."

  "Cleverer still. Of course we all know it wasn't really your idea at all. It was Sheila's."

  Sheila took another step back. But curiously she said: "Go on, hit me. That's what you want to do, isn't it?"

  Fletcher ignored her. To Gerry he said quietly: "Can you get the money back tomorrow without anyone knowing?"

  Taken aback, Gerry said: "I could -- if I wanted to. But I'm not going to."

  "You are."

  "You think you can make me, you little fat . . . "

  "Get him, Gerry!" Sheila suddenly screamed.

  She was right back against the wall, in some way terrified of Fletcher-Baudaker, but something had snapped in her and she made something snap in Gerry.

  Gerry lashed wildly at the little man, and Fletcher, moving easily to evade the blow, brushed against a lamp-standard. It teetered and fell on him. Unhurt but dazed, he didn't move as Gerry caught him by the throat.

  With the nervous frenzy of a man attacking something or someone he feared, like a man stamping in terror on a snake, Gerry squeezed madly and Baudaker was helpless. He heaved and fought for air and got none. He could feel his eyes popping and he knew Gerry in his sudden insanity would not release him while life remained in him.

  Fletcher dimly heard Sheila chirping wild encouragement. Baudaker was dying and there was nothing he could do about it. Gerry was twice as strong as he was. But there was something Fletcher could do about it. He did it.

  CHAPTER 5: GERRY

  He released Baudaker and the little man slumped to the floor, eyes glazed almost as in death.

  But Fletcher had made the transfer in time.

  "Finish him, you fooll" Sheila shrieked.

  Gerry turned casually. "Ies all off, Sheila," he said.

  "Christ, you can't stop now! Finish the little creep."

  He felt a strong urge to slap her and knew that although part of this came from Fletcher, some of it came from the habits of Gerry of slapping and punching Sheila as indifferently as a schoolboy kicked stones. Fletcher was in complete control, but Gerry was with him, unsurprised, wary, sullen, rebellious. It was in Gerry's nature to hit Sheila because he could not hit anyone else.

  Fletcher, however, had no intention of hitting Sheila.

  "Go home," he said.

  She responded with a tornado of profanity and obscenity which seemed to be their common language.

  "Stop that," he said in disgust.

  "You're going to put the money back?"

  "Yes." He bent over Baudaker, loosening his tie and opening his shirt. Baudaker was conscious, though every heaving breath was torture, and his eyes showed he knew exactly what had happened. But even if he could have spoken he would not have done so. He was leaving this to Fletcher.

  Suddenly the universe exploded in pain, pain greater than he had experienced as Gerry was strangling him. Sheila had kicked him as hard as she was able in the side.

  Eyes streaming with pain, he straightened with difficulty.

  "Now look here," he said. "That's out, understand? I'm not going to hit you, I don't like hitting you, but . . . "

  "Since when?" she hooted derisively, and with a careless wrench hauled her sweater up her body.

  Her ribs and skinny midriff were patterned with bruises, blue, black, purple and yellow. She had been beaten systematically, regularly, remorselessly, as if the beating was a chore which was as obligatory as eating and sleeping.

  Suddenly excited, she breathed: "Hit me, Gerry. Go on, hurt me. I want to be hurt. I want that feeling. Hit me till I can't stand. Hit me till I scream for you to stop, and don't stop. Take me, Gerry."

  Sick, Fletcher wanted nothing more than to be rid of her. "Sheila," he said firmly, and then paused. Tell her the truth? Ridiculous. Yet she had to know that the Gerry she had known no longer existed.

  "We've got to straighten ourselves out before it's too late. We've got to do things the right way, the decent way."

  He stopped because she was laughing incredulously and derisively.

  "You, Gerry?" she sneered.

  It was hopeless. Talking to her while she was in her present mood was a waste of time.

  Indeed, he began to be afraid that it would always be a waste of time.

  At that early moment he suspected that working on Sheila from outside her, even as Gerry, particularly as Gerry, was not going to be a success. It was part of his job, part of his usual unsought responsibility, to try to set Gerry right. And Gerry and Sheila were linked unto death -- everyone seemed to take that for granted -- although they were not married or engaged and perhaps never would be. Their kind of relationship did not seem to encompass marriage. They were tethered together by lust, masochism, sadism, but not by tenderness.

  Anyway, he could do nothing about Sheila now.

  Grotesquely she still had her sweater hanging like a muffler round her neck. Her frail, discolored body aroused protectiveness as well as horror in Fletcher, and he could feel Gerry experiencing the new feeling and being baffled by it.

  He stepped forward and Sheila tensed, expecting blows and both welcoming and fearing the pain they would bring.

  Gently, he pulled down her sweater.

  At a loss, she looked at him and then at Baudaker, still on the floor, still gasping, but less tortured now.

  "You really want me to go?" she said, with sudden deadly calm.

  "I can't make it any clearer, can I?"

  "Then by Christ I'll go," she said savagely, and slammed the door behind her. A moment later he heard the front door slam.

  He bent over Baudaker again. "Can I get you anything?"

  "Water, please," Baudaker croaked.

  "It's tea you want," Fletcher said. "Just a minute. Shall I help you to a chair?"

  "No, I'll stay here."

  "You know what's happened, of course."

  "Yes. Tell me, what will it mean to Gerry?"

  "I don't know. At the moment he's sort of standing back and looking on, wondering just what you asked, what this is going to mean to him. One thing -- he's not as selfish as I thought. He still cares in a certain shamefaced way about you, and of course in his twisted way about Sheila."

  "Be good to him," Baudaker begged.

  "I'll try to be."

  "Yes, I know. I'm sorry about this; I didn't want to lose you."

  Fletcher smiled half incredulously as he went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Only Baudaker had ever said, or would ever say, anything like that. All the others had been and would be unspeakably relieved to be free of him. It could not be too soon for Gerry.

&n
bsp; Baudaker was a friend, possibly the first he had ever had.

  The first colloquy came a few minutes later after Fletcher had helped Baudaker to bed, placed a pot of tea on the bedside table, and put the car in. Fletcher, who had never in his life stolen as much as a postage stamp, could not rest with Ł300 of stolen money in the house, and intended to go to the shop right away.

  --It would be all right to put it back tomorrow, Gerry said.

  --No. Tonight.

  --Ill have to climb in through a lavatory window.

  --Good. You know the way, then.

  --It's a long walk. Why not take the car? You can drive.

  --But you haven't a driving license. Do you want to be picked up and charged with taking away a car without permission and driving without a license and without third party insurance, with Ł300 of stolen money in the car?

  Gerry didn't answer the question. He was uneasy rather than rebellious. He was also reluctantly and resentfully ashamed, shocked to learn in the most unambiguous way what Fletcher thought of him and his behavior toward Baudaker, Sheila and his employers.

  Of course, Gerry himself would have remained unimpressed if Fletcher, as an ordinary living individual, had told him what he thought of him. But now Gerry was partly Fletcher -- and possibly also partly Judy, Ross and Baudaker. He was seeing himself in many mirrors, from several unflattering angles.

  --She made me hit her.

  --You're stronger than she is. Much stronger. How could she make you?

  --It seems different now.

  --Never mind, said Fletcher with a sympathy and understanding he had not shown toward Ross. Perhaps he had not then acquired sympathy and understanding. -- You're not eighteen yet. You've done nothing irreparable. Maybe I can help you.

  Gerry burst out suddenly --You were in the old man!

  Fletcher was taken aback that Gerry had only just realized this, despite the conversation with Baudaker. But then, the boy did not possess more than average intelligence.

  --Yes.

  --What are you, a sort of angel?

  It was Fletcher's turn to be shocked. True, he had been able to do some good, he hoped. But on the whole he regarded himself as a tortured soul unable to rest. What he had learued in Edinburgh gave him a clearer idea of the facts, but not much to justify the sense of purpose he yearned to feel, because only purpose could justify what was happening. He had always been a misfit and now he was far more of a misfit than he had ever been in life.

  --An angel? Ridiculous.

  Gordon's was a very large marble-fronted shoe shop, on the town's main street. The owner, Jeremy Gordon, still ran it like the tiny shoemaker's shop he had started forty years ago. Although he had achieved reasonable success, he still had only one shop when others who began as he did had achieved a chain.

  He had been robbed all his life and his rivals had always been first. Yet he was a happy man, and for the first time Gerry felt some respect for the old fool seeing him through Fletcher's eyes. He was not a silly old man who deserved to be robbed, but a man who could never stop being optimistic over human nature.

  Restoring the stolen money proved to be extremely easy, because the shop, though reasonably secure against an outside raider, was a cardboard shoe box to anyone who worked in it. And this fact, seen through Fletcher's eyes, made Gerry feel ashamed again.

  Gerry did not make any effort to communicate on the way home.

  Thunderous knocking on the rarely used front door, punctuated by imperious peals of the bell, roused Gerry from a deep sleep, and a glance at the luminous dial of his alarm clock told him it was 3 a.m. It would be Sheila, of course.

  Both he and Fletcher were disinclined to answer the door. But if Gerry did not, Baudaker would have to get up.

  Gerry got up reluctantly, scarcely able to see for sleep. Fletcher, suppressed by the heaviness of Gerry's oblivion, was a mere passenger. Gerry, like Ross, slept in pajama trousers only, and Fletcher vaguely thought of putting something else on. But he was not sufficiently in control to have any effect on Gerry, who stumbled to the front door and opened it, blinking.

  Policemen.

  Two in uniform, one in plain clothes.

  Roused a little, Fletcher realized that he would have known it was not Sheila at the door if he had not been so committed in the heavy sleep of a very tired seventeen-year-old. Then he saw that the police, grim and certain though they were, were made less grim and less certain by the totally convincing sleepiness of the youth in rumpled pajama trousers.

  Neither Fletcher nor Gerry could achieve alertness for several minutes. The three policemen were in the lounge. Baudaker did not appear and the police did not insist on rousing him.

  They had reason to believe that Ł300 was missing from Gordon's. Could Gerry tell them anything?

  Fully awake at last, Gerry said: "You got a call from Sheila?"

  The plain-clothes man said: "Suppose we did, son?"

  "We had a row," said Gerry.

  "So she split on you. She didn't even wait till the morning."

  "You don't know Sheila." Gerry-Fletcher paused: he didn't want to lie or half-lie. The money had been taken, but it was safely back. There was no need to do anything but wait.

  "You mean she was lying, son?"

  Fletcher found the "son" irritating. In his old-fashioned view, police were friends if you had never broken the law, enemies if you were a crook. This detective believed, still believed, that the kid in front of him had stolen Ł300 from his employer. That was perfectly reasonable, since Gerry had. But the friendliness jarred.

  Fletcher, who had been Baudaker for long enough to forget his joy in being young and strong and healthy as Judy and as Ross, suddenly had to suppress an urge to dive through the window and escape, as Gerry could easily do in his youth, and strength.

  The police, it became apparent, were waiting too. Probably they were waiting for a warrant to search the home. They had been invited in; at least, Gerry had not opposed their entry. But they said nothing about a search.

  The phone rang. The friendly detective said politely: "May I?" and even waited until Gerry nodded before picking it up.

  It was the type of one-sided phone conversation that made the whole conversation plain to the listener. Mr. Gordon was at the shop. Nothing was missing. Yes, he was quite certain. He couldn't be sure about the stock, but no money was missing. No attempt had been made to tamper with it.

  The friendly detective, curiously, was less friendly when he put down the phone. His friendliness was the smile on the face of the tiger. While he thought Gerry had broken into a shop and stolen Ł300, he was "son." When he thought Gerry had not, he became "you."

  "There's nothing to keep us," he said shortly. "You -- try to keep your girl friend in hand, will you? In fact, you'd be better away from that one. We know about you and we know about her."