The Suburbs of Hell

by Randolph Stow

  ‘What is it you’re doin?’ Dave asked. ‘I fought you was on a dredger.’

  ‘Not for a long time,’ Harry said. ‘No, Charlie and me are on this sea-defence job. You know, in St Felix Bay, where that work’s bein done, buildin up the cliff? Well, thass us. We got a pontoon with a crane on it, upriver at Birkness, and we scoop up stones and shingle and that and bring it back here on our barge. Thass good money, boy; you need a job like that.’

  ‘No experience,’ Dave said sadly.

  ‘You don’t need it. Well, Charlie does, but me, I’m on’y a labourer now. I’ll keep my eye open for you, if you like.’

  ‘Yeh, well, fanks, Harry,’ Dave said, without enthusiasm, stroking his black beard. ‘Yeah, that sound like that’d suit me.’

  ‘Where the hell’s Billy?’ Harry demanded of the air, and banging the table yelled: ‘Bill-ee!’

  The cropheaded crane-driver got up, carrying his cup of tea, and came over to take the chair beside him. He said: ‘Billy’s hitting the cooking sherry, I suspicion.’ As he spoke, a tall fat man, with a long apron over blue-and-white cook’s trousers, emerged from a rear door and bore down on them with a light but stately tread.

  ‘Billy,’ Harry said, ‘where was you, boy? I’m starvin.’

  Billy explained: ‘Family reunion going on out the back. My daughter, with her kids. Her husband’s at sea, and she’s scared to stay at home alone.’

  ‘She’s one of several,’ said the crane-driver. ‘There’ll be a few bolts and chains sold tomorrow.’

  ‘So I didn’t hear you come in,’ Billy told Harry. ‘Sorry. What’s it to be?’

  ‘Steak and chips,’ Harry said, ‘and bread and butter and a cuppa tea.’

  ‘Twice,’ said Dave.

  ‘Quick as I can,’ Billy promised, and went off, pausing for a moment in answer to some gesture from a Yugoslav seaman. His companions seemed to hold aloof from the exchange that followed, sitting hunched in their coats, and silent, like commuters.

  ‘I see ’em looking a bit happier,’ Charlie remarked, ‘a week ago. They got old Arthur, in the Moon, to teach ’em to play darts.’

  ‘Do they speak English?’ Dave asked.

  ‘One does, but not a lot. The oldest one, a bit bald in front, he’s the pack-leader.’

  ‘Charlie,’ said Harry, ‘would you reckon we could get young Dave here a job on our rig?’

  The grizzled crane-driver looked the young man over. He had a long thin face, longitudinally grooved like driftwood. ‘Possible,’ he decided after a moment. ‘Not soon, but people drop out and move on. What are you doing now?’

  ‘Nuffin,’ said Dave.

  ‘Got to do what I can for him,’ Harry said. ‘His father was an old mate.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dave said, morosely. ‘Thass right.’

  Fat Billy came back, silent-footed, and laid the table, reaching bare tattooed forearms around Harry’s back. ‘Those boys asked me,’ he said, ‘if I knew someone who’d change some pesetas for them. I don’t know who would, and I can’t. Feel sorry for them. Lousy position to be in.’

  ‘Well, then,’ Dave said, ‘that lets them out. They int been doin no burglin.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Harry demanded, shortly. ‘There weren’t no burglin done. I mean, no theft.’

  ‘You know that?’ Charlie asked, turning his wooden face.

  ‘Yeh,’ Harry said, ‘I know it.’ And he looked so grim that Charlie tactfully returned to his teacup.

  Billy was looking out through the steamy window traced with runnels of clearness. ‘Hullo,’ he said, ‘here’s trouble,’ and padded away to his kitchen.

  The bell tinkled, and Frank De Vere came in, drunk, and stood for a moment holding the door open, letting in frosty air, until Black Sam, following, gently moved him on and closed it. But still Frank stood, blue eyes blazing in his saturnine face, staring at Harry.

  ‘Evenin, Frank,’ said Harry, with a quizzical expression. ‘Sam.’

  Frank gave his muzzy head a slight shake, and muttered: ‘Harry.’

  ‘Come to join us? One of these days we’re goonna eat.’

  ‘No,’ said Frank, with a wandering voice but eyes transfixed. ‘No, I just—I was looking for Dave.’

  ‘I’m here,’ Dave said, twisting his chair about.

  ‘No—ah—not Dave,’ Frank said, ‘I meant—it’s Ken Heath I was looking for. He been in?’

  ‘Not since he was a teenager,’ Harry said, ‘I should imagine. Not ezzackly Ken’s class of caff, the Galley.’

  ‘Yeah, well, erm—’ Frank said. ‘Right, Harry.’ He wavered, then said to Black Sam: ‘Let’s try the Speedwell,’ and as soon as the door was opened for him disappeared.

  Sam said, grinning: ‘You see ’em in all conditions in my trade.’ He followed his fare out, and soon afterwards the glow of his tail-lights lit up the sweating window.

  ‘Jesus wept,’ said Charlie, ‘what have you been doing to that man De Vere, Harry? You in the habit of beating him up, or something?’

  ‘Search me,’ Harry said. ‘Made me think of my old cat when she get the idea she see ghosts. Well, he weren’t quite as sober as what we are.’

  ‘He often like that?’ Charlie asked Dave. ‘You know him?’

  Dave, from under his black forelock, was watching Harry, who was fiddling with a fork. Dave’s black eyes were brightly inquisitive but not intelligent. From the far end of the room the Yugoslavs were watching Harry too.

  ‘No,’ Dave said, ‘I int never sin him so nervy, like, before. Harry—’

  ‘What?’ said Harry, looking up from the fork.

  ‘Frank fink he know somefing, I reckon.’

  ‘Or else,’ Harry said, coolly, ‘he think I might have a foo theories of my own, and he don’t like the idea.’

  ‘That was an act?’ Charlie asked.

  ‘I don’t know, boy,’ Harry said. ‘Don’t know what he thinks, don’t properly know what I think, neither. All I know is, once you start suspectin, you might not be able to stop in time before you goo mad. Thass the mischief of it.’ He lost interest in the fork which dropped from the tattooed fingers with a clang, and glanced impatiently towards the kitchen door. ‘Ah, thank Christ, here come our chow at last.’

  At his usual table by the window in the Speedwell Commander Pryke was improving his acquaintance with Taffy Hughes, who was something quite high up in the Customs, though the Commander had never gathered exactly what. He had known Taffy, after a fashion, for years, but it was only now, when he was bereaved of his usual companion, that the broad and portly Welshman sought him out. The Commander took that very kindly. There was a reminder of Paul Ramsey in the way bearded Taffy sucked at his pipe and sat meditating over a pint; but he was an older man by a generation, and the Commander, who was older still, had quickly fallen into a sort of younger-brotherly relation with him which Taffy’s great solidity and a certain unwitherable boyishness in the Commander himself made natural. After testing him with certain political observations, about equally offensive to trendy Lefties and Visigoths, which only had the effect of making Taffy smoke with greater enjoyment, the Commander had come off it—that seemed to be Taffy’s silent message—and subsided into the decent bewilderment about everything which was his normal state. He felt sorrow that this reassuring person meant to leave him as soon as his pipe was out.

  The pipe was even then laid to cool in an ashtray, and Taffy showed signs of gathering his large body to rise.

  ‘Nice to see,’ said the Commander, ‘that fellow—Black Sam, don’t they call him?—wandering in here so naturally. I’d heard that some of the rumour-mongers had been trying to make him the scapegoat in this awful business.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ said Taffy, ‘that he wants to be here; or not in that company. He’s been standing for twenty minutes saying nothing at all, holding a glass of fruit-juice for comfort.’

  ‘My wife,’ said the Commander, ‘once had a Mrs Mop who said about some woman they both knew: “Yes, we�
��re friends, but not nice friends.” I should say that a lot of Frank De Vere’s friends have made that discovery. As a matter of fact, I should have expected Sam to be busier than usual, in the circumstances. I don’t think there’ll be so many pedestrians tonight wending their way home to New Tornwich after Last Orders.’

  ‘The pubs are very quiet,’ Taffy observed. ‘The family men are doing their duty. As this one should be,’ he went on, raising himself on the arms of his chair. ‘Oliver, this has been a very pleasant hour or so. We must foregather again.’

  ‘I do hope so,’ said the Commander, touched by the rare sound of his Christian name.

  ‘Sam,’ Taffy continued, on his feet, ‘nice to see you with a little leisure for once.’

  ‘Never for long,’ Sam said, pausing on his way towards the door. His high-boned face with the everted African lips was grave. ‘I had something to do for a friend, like. Evenin, Commander; quiet old night.’

  ‘Indeed,’ the Commander murmured, covertly studying his face. Sam, he decided, was not ill at ease, or different in his manner. What he was was unhappy.

  Taffy was struggling into his coat. ‘Wait for me, Sam. I see you’re parked beside me. Oliver—till the next time.’

  ‘Night, Commander,’ said Sam.

  ‘Good night,’ the Commander said, to their backs making for the quayside door, and turned in his chair to look through the window. He watched them cross the road and pause beside their cars at the quay’s edge, spinning out some polite exchange which Sam evidently found too long, for he hunched himself against the cold and dug his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  The oppressive sense of another body looming over him brought the Commander’s attention back into the room, and he turned his head and looked up into the face of Frank De Vere, also intent on the two figures under the lights above the water. When De Vere looked back at him he saw that the man was drunk, which had the effect of making his exceedingly blue eyes look rather crazy.

  The Commander said, not cordially: ‘Evening, ah—Frank.’

  ‘Snooping,’ Frank said to himself.

  ‘Snooping?’ the Commander repeated. ‘Who? Oh, Taffy, do you mean. Good heavens, no. He’s the right sort, Taffy.’

  Frank did not answer, but folded his arms and continued to stare through the window.

  ‘Everyone’s snooping,’ he said after a while. ‘Do you see, behind me, a rather squat-looking bloke at the bar? Scotland Yard, I believe. And our brave boys of the Press, risking their lives for us yet again. Snooping arseholes.’

  The two cars backed out and drove away, and Frank went on staring at nothing.

  ‘Are you all right?’ the Commander enquired. ‘You look a bit keyed up, if I may say so.’

  With a sudden movement Frank dropped into Taffy’s vacated chair. Putting his elbows on the table, and fixing the Commander with his crazy eyes, he said after a moment: ‘Yes. Yes, I’m tensed up.’

  ‘I suppose everybody is.’

  ‘My wife is, that’s for sure. That’s why Sam was here. He brought young Donna, who I think is his girl, but maybe not, he brought her to sit with my wife this evening. Because she’s in quite a state—my wife, I mean. I’ve told a lie and made a joke of it, but she’s not quite sure, I think.’

  The Commander, not being able to think of a thing to say, only gazed at him mildly.

  ‘I’ve got to get him first,’ Frank said, drunkenly gazing back. ‘Short and sweet—snicker snack—and it’s over.’

  ‘Am I following you, I wonder?’ the Commander mused. ‘Are you talking about vigilantes, or something of that sort?’

  ‘Something like that,’ Frank agreed. ‘I’m talking about one vigilante: me. Because he’s threatened my life. Mine, or my wife’s; probably both. So I shall have to get there first, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘De Vere, old chap,’ said the Commander, ‘you’re not making yourself terribly clear, I’m afraid. I shouldn’t, myself, have any scruples at all about shooting down this man like a mad dog—that is what you’re talking about?—but one must first know who he is.’

  Frank De Vere laced his fingers over his chest, still intently searching the Commander’s eyes. ‘I do know,’ he said. ‘I know him, and I know the weapon. What do you say to that?’

  ‘I say,’ said the Commander hesitantly, ‘as anyone would, I say that if you’re of the same opinion in the morning, you must go to the police immediately.’

  ‘Oh, shit,’ Frank muttered. He dropped his arms from the table and got up. ‘Good night, Commander. Thank you for your advice. Time I wasn’t here.’

  The Commander watched him cross the room unsteadily and go out by a side door. ‘Fella’s potty,’ he remarked to himself. He picked up his glass, saw it was empty, and decided to have a last double whisky; because old dogs, he was discovering, liked their sleep.

  Barabas.

  As for myself, I walk abroad o’ nights,

  And kill sick people groaning under walls:

  Sometimes I go about and poison wells…

  Ithamore.

  One time I was an hostler at an inn,

  And in the night time secretly would I steal

  To travellers’ chambers, and there cut their

  throats.

  The Jew of Malta

  I hear the door of the Speedwell bang, and soon afterwards he comes into my line of vision. A slight form, erect, but a little bowed in the shoulders, crossing the road with a measured tread towards the quay’s edge, where he halts, under the pinkish-orange lights, and stands looking out over the water.

  The water is broad, black, glossy. The tide is coming in. The two wide rivers drive, northwards and westwards, deep into the dark land, its rustling unleaved woods, its hibernating fields.

  Again and again one gull comes with a leaflike fall into the light, is for a moment the ghost of a bird, then is caught back into the night.

  He stands beneath the lamps, looking out, beyond their influence, to the clear black sky with frosty stars. Below and beyond him the red and white lights of a pilot launch rock a little on the swell.

  He is always, now, in a ferment of memories. Other climates, other seas. A trick of light will bring back some place half a world away, and changed utterly by years, passed with no record except in his mind.

  The stick on which he leans was given him by his wife when he came back to her finally, to stay forever. The gift said to him that he was old, with nothing before him but a little daily walking for his health. She suggested a dog, and he snapped at her. They found that they had never known each other well.

  Now he carries the stick always; it is a reproach. He would like to explain to her that his irritations were with himself and with time. He remembers, from the long months of her helplessness after the first stroke, moments of impatience, perhaps understood by her, which he would like to cancel out, undo.

  His profile is still that of the youth, more youthful than his years, who married her. A short straight nose, a chin just firm enough, a pink cheek. His profile, in the sights, is very Anglo-Saxon.

  He hears nothing, will hear nothing ever. His arms fly up, his body twists. The stick clatters on to concrete as he disappears.

  From below where he was standing a splash comes back. On the pilot launch, out of my line of sight, a man cries out.

  4

  THINGS CATCH UP

  Soon it snowed: fat heavy flakes drifting past Linda De Vere’s window as she lay in bed by daylight, past the window of the eyrie in Harry Ufford’s house where Dave Stutton sat listening to loud music, over the high irregular roofs of the old town. On some days the north-easterly howled down the tunnels of the streets, searching out every chink in the close-packed houses. On others the sky was clear, the light was desert-sharp, the flat sea looked like grey silk, and lethal. On a night of rockets and exploding maroons two ships collided a mile offshore, and half a dozen people died within minutes of touching the water. The national newspapers instantly became friendly, and heaped
praise on the pilots and lifeboatmen of the notorious town.

  A few days after the death of Commander Pryke the idea was floated that all the males of Old and New Tornwich above the age of sixteen should be fingerprinted, with their consent. A solicitor and a schoolteacher worried in the Tornwich & Stourford Packet about civil rights, and Harry Ufford wrote the Packet a confusing letter arguing that the prints of all members of the professional classes ought to be in the records anyway. An edited but still puzzling version appeared in print, and he discussed it with Arthur in the deserted bar of the New Moon.

  ‘Well, I can’t make head or tail of it,’ said Arthur, showing his usual distaste for the subject. ‘From what I hear poor old Prykey was hit by a sniper, from somewhere near the telephone box. So what fingerprints could they have?’

  ‘P’rhaps he was in the box,’ Harry suggested. ‘P’rhaps they found one there.’

  ‘Well, good luck to them,’ Arthur said; ‘they’ll need it. The owners of a lot of the prints they’ll find there are in Turku and Antwerp and San Sebastian and even bloody Leningrad and Lagos now.’

  ‘If it’s not that,’ Harry said, ‘then they’ve found something in one of the other places. They int all that stoopid, Arthur. I read a lot of books about how they work in this sort of case.’

  ‘You and all the rest of the ghouls who drink here,’ said Arthur. ‘Kinky, I call it.’

  ‘Well, we int ezzackly crowded out with ghouls,’ said Harry, ‘are we? I mean, I can still sort of move my elbows, like, tonight.’

  ‘You know what it is?’ said Arthur. ‘It’s that outside Gents of mine. Nobody dares risk a pee in case he gets shot. I’ll let you use the Ladies, if you need it. Not many ladies get in here lately.’

  ‘I int scared of your bog,’ Harry said. ‘Glad I int a milkman, though. They’re the jumpiest boys outside Ulster these dark mornins.’

  ‘It’ll all blow over,’ Arthur said. ‘I’d put a tenner on that. What is it—two weeks since the Commander? Poor old boy. He was the same age as me. Well, he had no one to leave behind, and I suppose that’s a sort of a mercy. How’s that young brother of Paul’s? I haven’t seen him since they used to get in here sometimes of a weekend.’