The Suburbs of Hell

by Randolph Stow

  At the sound of a knock she stops, one imagines, in her hovering way. She looks, one imagines, at the door, alert, birdlike.

  Her voice comes from close. ‘Harry? Yes, it’s here, your tobacco.’

  The door opens on the dim light, and she is standing there, plump hand clasping the tin below her thrusting little bosom, face prepared in an expression of jocular reproof.

  Her eyes have all at once a mad fixity, and reflect the moon. Her mouth begins to open on teeth all at once so obviously not her own.

  At the sound the dog begins to yap. The dog makes a snarling rush as the body slumps against the door, which gives way with creaking hinges and retreats into the room. The tin rattles to the floor and spills tobacco.

  Now all that she has been is opened to me.

  3

  TO CLOTHE A SHADOW

  Indolent Linda De Vere was woken at nine, having watched a film on BBC2 until an early hour, by the coyly nagging beep of her digital alarm clock. Her husband was gone, of course; she had a recollection of having been brought half awake, an hour or two earlier, by his leaving. He had been in bed and asleep for some time when she had come upstairs, and this was becoming routine, in the second year of their marriage.

  She loved her bed, he often said, less indulgently than at first. He had a theory, or had heard a theory, that people like her were the result of induced births, and was delighted when her mother, in a letter, confirmed that Linda was such a birth. She had some sort of sense of it herself, cocooned in her warm sheets, wanting not to be born. She liked to lie in the mornings, after he had gone, and watch the sky over the roof-ridges opposite, and the gulls which came dipping down into the narrow street. The gulls came even in the middle of snow, when the roofs were white and the flakes often blew upwards, like seeding willow-herb.

  She could not, however, decently allow herself very much of that, and was soon in the bathroom, facing up to the fact of her birth. On the glass shelf over the basin she noticed a couple of lipsticks, and wondered at them, but decided that Frank, hunting for something else, had taken them out and forgotten them. They were darker than any she had used for some time, and she thought it would not be wasteful to throw them away. They were loud, and she was quiet and pale: pale-lipped, pale-skinned, with unremarkable blonde hair and large grey-blue eyes which looked vague, being short-sighted.

  Downstairs in the kitchen she made herself a cup of coffee and took it into the sitting-room to the chair facing the television set. She liked her room, snug with central heating, though Frank’s museum of firearms and bladed weapons on all the walls jarred on her now, bringing back an argument in which frayed nerves had showed. Later, cooler, she had told him that he could have a proper man’s den all of his own for his murderous things, and a Hornby train too if he liked. But he always thought of that room as a nursery, and nothing had been done, and no more said.

  She was often extremely nervous. In her sea-days, the boring days of a stewardess on a ferry, there had been little epiphanies of panic, when she suddenly saw all the hills and valleys below her and thought that she was, in effect, flying, and might fall. Creakings and pitchings and judderings in the middle of the night had sometimes made her heart jump. And there had been far too many people in her sort of sea-life, people against whom she could not lock her door.

  She read a good deal, in that armchair, often returning to certain old volumes which were in the small bookcase. She liked novels about large houses with a history, and servants, and secrets. Rebecca and Gone With The Wind were her great favourites, and sometimes she would slip back into a more genteel century and live for a while in Jane Eyre or The Woman in White or Uncle Silas. Of recent books, she loved The Thorn Birds, and quite liked The French Lieutenant’s Woman.

  It was as she was putting down her empty cup on a table that she noticed the writing on the windowpane, a little blurred by the net-curtain. She got up, cigarette in hand, and crossed the room to examine it. She did not draw the curtain, in case some passer-by should see her and think her odd. But she made out that the writing was inside the glass, and in a lipstick which she had worn only once. It had been too bright, a mistake.

  The message, in very regular capitals, read:

  NOT TONIGHT:

  SOON

  The Os of the last word had irises and pupils.

  The thought of such playfulness, if that was what it was, on the part of her husband made her tired. Listlessly, a little fretfully, as if to him, she said: ‘And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?’

  *

  Commander Pryke’s house, which dated from the late fifteenth century, was in strong contrast with its Georgian neighbour across the way. Paul Ramsey’s tall barrack was austere, inside and out; but the Commander’s interior was beamy, chintzy, rosewoody, with an occasional touch of oriental brass. Everywhere were signs of the hand of the late Mrs Pryke, whose portrait, tolerably painted, looked down from above the drawing-room fireplace. There were photographs of her, too, on piano and bookshelves, producing the composite impression of a wartime young lady with some good prewar clothes, and a patient dutiful face in the manner of Celia Johnson.

  Among the photographs were some of her husband at similar ages: always in uniform and tensely self-conscious, with a lean trim neat-featured face which might in those days have been called handsome, but never interesting.

  The Commander, drinking a whisky in one of the twin armchairs in front of the fire, was having some thoughts about Greg Ramsey, in the other. One didn’t, he was thinking, want a young fellow to be a windbag, naturally not; but really, some of them nowadays seemed to take a pride in being almost inarticulate. It even seemed that education made them worse. The Commander rather enjoyed the company of, rather lay in wait for, a young stockbroker who came sailing at Tornwich most weekends in the summer, and at that moment found him reassuring to remember. Not much brain there, and a certain coldness of the eye which could be offputting when one noticed it; but a decent, a thoroughly civilized flow of words when they were called for. Greg Ramsey, with his abrupt utterances eked out with unilluminating, un-English gestures (like some Maltese or Malay fisherman, the Commander thought, trying to explain something), was definitely hard work and probably a sign of what universities had become.

  He cleared his throat and asked: ‘Drink all right?’

  The boy (the Commander knew that he was twenty-four, but he had the cut of a teenager) held up his glass to show that he had hardly touched it, and said: ‘Fine, thanks.’

  The heavy, fashionable moustache had begun to look false on that haggard young face, above that childish mouth.

  ‘Oh, drink up,’ said the Commander, showing him how it was done. ‘It could do us irreparable good.’

  ‘Lead in your pencil,’ the boy toasted, wanly smiling, ‘sir.’

  The Commander got up to refill his glass, and from the table murmured: ‘Dreadful. Incredible. I mean, literally—incredible.’

  When he looked round he saw that Greg Ramsey was sitting on the edge of his chair, chin on his chest, moving his head from side to side. His awkward blue-denimed limbs looked broken.

  ‘I say,’ said the Commander, ‘Greg—’

  ‘I didn’t really know her until yesterday,’ the boy said, in a boy’s voice. ‘Last night I gave her a hug, she was so nice. She was so nice.’

  ‘Dreadful,’ the Commander said again. A shy impulse drove him to lay a hand on the thin blue shoulder turned away from him, before taking his drink to his chair.

  ‘You don’t know what to do,’ Greg said, into the fire. ‘You don’t know what to think. It’s so—so wanton. There’s no sense, no feeling, not even of hate, no motive.’

  ‘There might be, you know,’ said the Commander. ‘I mean to say, it’s hard to believe that a lively widow, who must have been quite attractive once, had no man at all in her life for forty years. I’m sure there is a motive to be found, however mad it may be, somewhere in her past.’

  ‘Yes,’ Greg said, with
one of his unhelpful gestures. ‘Oh yes. They’ll be rummaging through her past now, as they’re rummaging through everything she had.’

  ‘It has to be done, my boy. Nobody does such a thing entirely without motive.’

  Greg turned his head. ‘And my brother?’

  ‘Well, there, too,’ said the Commander, a little flustered, ‘there probably was one. Nothing discreditable to your brother, I’m sure, and I didn’t mean to imply that, any more than I meant to suggest anything fishy in the background of that poor, nice little woman. But dammit, Greg, man is a motivated animal. There must be some reason, some connection that makes sense, even if only to a deranged mind.’

  ‘Did I look offended?’ Greg asked. ‘Sorry. I wasn’t. My mind was wandering.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what, young fella,’ the Commander said, ‘you’d do well to get out of that house and go back to where you came from. Even when the circumstances are normal, it’s not easy to live in the middle of—another person’s clutter.’

  The young man shook his head, and took a token sip of his whisky. After a moment he said: ‘I would always have to keep in touch, anyway. I’m a suspect, I suppose.’

  ‘You!’ exclaimed the Commander, feigning shock. ‘Oh, what rot. Why, you weren’t even here—the first time.’

  ‘No,’ Greg agreed. ‘But I left London rather early on a Sunday morning. There might be somebody who could swear to seeing my car parked there all night; but I doubt that, in the heart of bedsitter-land. I can’t think of anyone there who would know my car, or me, either.’

  The Commander mused about that. ‘Seems odd to me, the idea of being so totally anonymous. Of course, Conrad was right: a sailor leads the most sedentary of lives, taking his house with him like a snail. It’s you bedsitter-dwellers who navigate the unknown.’

  ‘Not me,’ Greg said, ‘not normally. I just borrowed this place in London for a few weeks. So sailors do read Conrad, Commander?’

  ‘Some do,’ said the Commander. ‘I used to. Rather deep. Not very cheerful, but—well, that’s true to life, isn’t it?’

  ‘Someone who knew him,’ Greg said, ‘I think it was Bertrand Russell, said he was like a man walking on a crust over molten lava, expecting at any minute to fall through. In the last eight days I’ve come to understand what that means. Oh God. When I saw her, I had a feeling—apart from what I was feeling for her—a feeling for myself, of dread, of absolute dread.’

  ‘You saw her?’ said the Commander, staring. ‘I understood that Harry Ufford—’

  ‘I was with him,’ Greg said, sounding tired. ‘Apparently she’d invited us there for breakfast, and Harry held me to that, although it was lateish, near nine. When the dog heard us on the steps, it started to go mad. Then we saw that the door was slightly ajar, and the dog was snarling and prancing in the opening. And then we both guessed.’

  The Commander said, sincerely: ‘I’m so sorry, Greg.’

  ‘She was lying just inside, as she must have fallen. It was the same as before. Through the forehead, but this time point-blank.’

  ‘Frightful,’ breathed the Commander. ‘Oh, foul.’

  ‘Harry was so grim, and silent. I hardly recognized him. Until he picked up the dog, to quieten it, and then he cried a bit. That was when I felt the dread.’

  ‘If Harry,’ said the Commander, ‘were to find this person before the police, he would do something terrible.’

  ‘So would I,’ said the young man. ‘I would be—atrocious.’

  The Commander, whose political discussions, or tantrums, often turned on the point of law and order, thought to insert a word there, but put away the idea because the boy was not really with him, but back in the two violated rooms. So instead he reached forward with the poker, and made a bigger blaze for the lad to gaze at.

  ‘We’re doing,’ Greg said, ‘what must be being done in nearly every other place in these streets where two or more people are together. Rummaging. Getting together rags to clothe the shadow. That’s what they’ll be doing. Like in that Wells story: bandaging the Invisible Man. In somebody’s life there are the rags that will make the shadow take shape when it is dressed with them.’

  ‘Not someone we know,’ objected the Commander. ‘Oh no, dear chap. Some stranger, some prowler from outside, that is quite obvious. With a motive or without one—if you insist—but a stranger. Don’t you agree?’

  The young man shrugged, and sank back into his chair away from the fire’s new blaze. ‘Funny enough, as Harry would say, I don’t think very much about it. One doesn’t. One thinks of the one who’s gone. I keep thinking of Paul and all he did for me, and wondering if he thought I took too much for granted. I did at one time, I know. I had rather the feeling in those days that he was too old to have a life of his own.’

  The Commander leaned his head back and looked at the painted face of his wife with its reserved smile. ‘Tu n’as rien à te reprocher,’ he said. ‘My wife used to quote that. She had a poor sad French woman-friend with a bedridden old mother, and that was her guiding principle: that the most important thing in life was to have nothing to reproach oneself for, with respect to the dead.’

  ‘Are there such people?’ Greg asked. ‘If so, they’re thick, I’d guess.’

  The Commander said nothing, but went on staring at the portrait, in a rapt lethargy, just as his visitor stared at the fire.

  Harry was showing Dave Stutton his new quarters, in the room at the top of Harry’s tall thin house. ‘Thass a bit Spartan, like,’ said Harry, ‘but thass got what you need, I s’ppoose. Bed, cupboard, drawers. There’s a foo bits of gear of mine stowed away up here, but I shan’t be botherin you, I never come up this far.’

  Dave, at the window, peering down, remarked: ‘Thass a bit like a lighthouse here,’ and then looked awkward.

  But Harry seemed not to have heard, and only said, after a moment: ‘Well, you get yourself settled, boy, and I’ll give you a drink when you come down. No supper, though; I didn’t buy no food today, what with the coppers and that. I thought I’d goo to the Galley, myself. You?’

  ‘Yeh,’ Dave said, ‘sure. Fanks for everyfing, Harry.’

  ‘You’re welcome, boy,’ said Harry, at the door, with a genial smile, which faded, however, even before he turned.

  When Dave, later, followed him down two flights of stairs he found him sitting in his chair with the little dog in his lap. From the corner of the fireplace the cat was looking on balefully. ‘Problems,’ Harry said to Dave. ‘I got problems. Oh you bad boy, you greeneyed monster, Rover.’

  Dave pointed a finger at the toy dog. ‘You call that fing Rover?’

  ‘Rover’s the cat,’ Harry explained. ‘I don’t think I ever heard the name of the dog. Ena just useta call her silly names, like Tiddles and that.’

  ‘Thass a good name for a dog,’ Dave said. ‘A good name for that dog. Tiddles—kill!’

  ‘Cut that out, boy,’ Harry said, as the dog started. ‘She’s in a state. Her nerves are shot to pieces, and my jealous old cat int helpin. Poor little old dog.’ He brought his forehead down to rest for a moment against the spaniel’s.

  ‘You goonna keep ’er?’ Dave asked.

  ‘I reckon,’ said Harry, gazing into the dog’s face. ‘Oh, if you could on’y talk. Just think of it, Dave: these bright little eyes have sin it, sin the man with the gun. This is the on’y witness there is.’

  ‘Everyone,’ Dave said, ‘say: “The man”, but that don’t have to be a man. I mean, thass not as if there was any sex in it.’

  ‘Thass what makes it all the more pecooliar,’ said Harry, musing. ‘I mean, this sort of thing, thass nearly always about sex. And then half the commoonity can say: “Well, thass me safe.” But nobody’s safe here: not you or me, not the vicar’s wife or the harbour master’s little daughter, not even the dogs and cats, seein he seem to be doin it just for a giggle.’

  ‘They say thass some foreign seaman,’ Dave said. ‘Yugoslav, that’d be my guess.’

  ‘O
h, what shit,’ Harry muttered. ‘They say. They int got a clue, boy, and well you know it. And why Yugoslav, anyway?’

  ‘I don’t like ’em,’ Dave admitted.

  ‘There, you see? Thass ezzackly what I mean.’

  He got up from his chair, the dog in his arms. ‘Talkin of Yugoslav seamen and such,’ he said, ‘thass time we went to the Galley. I int eaten today, not a soddin crumb. I’m just beginnin to notice. I shall have to shut the dog in the kitchen where the cat can’t eat her, then we’re off.’

  Outside the air was biting, and above the streetlamps a clear sky made the roofs gleam with icy moonlight. At the end of the narrow street which they were following a great white ship, blazing with yellow light, slid by. Harry looked at his watch. ‘Late,’ he said. ‘Must be rough weather over there.’

  Among the façades of secretive dwelling-houses the Galley’s glowing windows made a festive interruption. The door, opening on steamy heat, rang a bell, and at the sound groups of men at the scattered tables looked up to see who had arrived. The strip-lighting was harsh, and the Galley gleamed, in a dull fashion, because everything in it had to be washable. Some of its patrons had the trick of duelling by firing off, as it were, sauce-bottles at one another.

  At a table towards the back of the large room sat a cluster of dark sailorly men. Harry murmured to Dave: ‘Your Yugoslavs,’ and Dave nodded.

  ‘Off that Spanish ship,’ he whispered, ‘at King’s Wharf—you know? They been around for a week or more. She’s arrested for debt.’

  ‘I know who they are,’ said Harry, seating himself at an empty table. ‘They’re pretty famous among the gossips, such as you. From the way they look around ’em, I think they know it.’

  ‘I fink the fuzz,’ Dave said, as he sat down, ‘might have been askin ’em about their movements, like.’

  A man at another table, who had been looking at them over a plate of fish and chips, caught Harry’s eye and said, economically: ‘Harry,’ with a nod of his cropped grey head. Harry slightly raised one hand, and returned: ‘Charlie.’ To Dave he explained: ‘Charlie’s our crane-driver, on the job.’