The Suburbs of Hell

by Randolph Stow

  It brought him out of the house, that tremulous sense of health and hope. He was timid at first, and pretended to be busy and purposeful, with the idea that stray glances would not have time to light on him. But most of the few people who might have recognized him were dead or gone away, and his nondescript beard and clothes made him much like any other seaman or fisherman or labourer to be seen there.

  Unimportant things pleased him unreasonably: that ragwort was flowering yellow in the crevices of old walls, that fields across the estuary were bright green with new barley, that the sea was like a polished grey stone with a sheen on it, as if reflecting a blue-green sky. Oystercatchers waded and searched, gorse was brilliant in the weak sun. The crude bright colours of man, on fishermen’s dinghies and on a line of beach-huts, brought back a pleasure he had once taken in a new box of coloured pencils.

  In a different place, in a bay of the estuary, a plain of sea-purslane and sea-aster carved with shining brown runnels, he watched mallard waddle and swim, and flocks of dunlin skitter away like blown white smoke over the sculpted, sky-mirroring mud.

  He went further afield, to the woods fringing the estuary some miles from the town. Walking towards the shore through newly green fields, in sun just warm enough to bring out the smell of grass and sea, under planing gulls and invisible larks, he felt his sense of wellbeing as an agitation, something extreme. Celandine was budding by the field edges, and in the bare woods, among fresh leaves of dog’s mercury and wood-spurge, wood anemones and primroses were showing above ground. He climbed down an earth cliff to the shore and from an uprooted tree watched on the sleepy blue water a few swans drawing to them all the sky’s light.

  In the woods, or in some field beyond, there was a shot, and a flock of rooks rose cawing. At first he thought nothing, found nothing to think about in such an ordinary country sound. Then something must have happened, like a shadow cast over him by the wheeling black birds. He found that he had edged into a sort of cave made by the great roots of the tree. He was trembling. He could not think how to get home again.

  He forced himself to his feet. He stood exposed on the sand, between woods and water, and shouted through his cupped hands. The jittery rooks took flight once more, but nobody came.

  He had a habit of shutting himself up early in his room, but that night he could not sleep. The excitement of having wandered so far, and his fright on the lonely shore, had built up a tension which turned, when he was lying in the dark, to anger. That was not altogether new, but the violence of it was new. It shook his heart: that he distinctly felt, as his memory fetched back, seemed to bombard him with, instances of injustices, slights, affronts offered to him as far back in his life as he could remember. The things he had endured with such meekness made him choke now with rage, and words burst out of him, all the bitter words that ought to have been said earlier to a world which could treat him so undutifully.

  ‘Oh sleep,’ he groaned, hugging himself. ‘Oh sleep, poor boy.’

  He began to feel that if he tried to lie still any longer he would suffocate, and got up and threw on some clothes. He paced up and down, making wide, angry gestures at the thoughts that came into his head. His loud clock, which was slow, started with a whirr to strike midnight.

  He went downstairs and poured himself a drink, and while he drank it continued to pace and gesture and mutter. Now that he had, as he felt, called the world’s bluff, he longed for a confrontation with it. He wanted a fight, even if only with words: the just, lethal words which must have been in him all the time but had never insisted on being said in the days when he was dulled by docility.

  As he continued to drink the words came very fluently. Fluency had never been much prized, or even trusted, by the contemporaries among whom he had spent most of his life. Taciturnity was thought more sincere. But now he was almost awed by the sincerity, pointed by gesture, of the rebukes that poured from his lips.

  Eventually he had to go to the bathroom, and while he was there studied himself in the glass. Diana, he remembered, had said he was a scruff nowadays. He rebuked her, cuttingly, for that characteristic remark, and then hunted up a pair of scissors and a comb and gave his hair and beard a trim. Afterwards he washed and combed himself with care.

  In the dimness of Paul’s bedroom, by the light of street-lamps, he chose clothes from the wardrobe and drawers. When he had put on a white shirt and a tie, a dark suit and sober black Oxfords, he went back to the study for another drink.

  The telephone was picked up as soon as he had finished dialling, but for some moments the man did not speak. At length he said, warily as usual, ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Hullo,’ Greg said. ‘Did I wake you? Are you in bed?’

  ‘No,’ said the man, and sounded relieved. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You know,’ Greg said, and opened the lid of the musical box for a couple of seconds. When it was closed, he added: ‘Don’t you?’

  The man’s voice had altogether changed, and was now dead tired. ‘So you talk.’

  ‘Oh, I talk sometimes. Sometimes I want to talk. I suppose you know how it is, like when you’ve had a drink or two, and there just isn’t anyone—you know?’

  ‘I don’t know nothing,’ the man said. ‘I don’t know who the fuck you are, or why you ring up and play that tape or whatever that is. That don’t mean nothing to me. I reckon you’ve had the wrong number all this time.’

  ‘No, that’s not it,’ Greg said. ‘It’s silly, but I was wanting to talk to you. But when it came to it, I couldn’t get started. Very silly, that. You didn’t recognize the box, then? I thought you might remember it.’

  ‘Listen, boy,’ the man said, ‘you sound harmless enough, but you don’t sound very well, neither. And we had a homicidal maniac here not so long ago, and p’rhaps he didn’t sail away after all. The worst you’ve done to me so far is give me a couple of sleepless nights. All the same, I’m startin to think I won’t keep this to myself no more.’

  ‘No, why should you?’ Greg agreed. ‘Only, would you come and see me, come and talk to me? I’ll give you a drink. I mean, now.’

  ‘Oh, sure thing,’ said the man. ‘Like a shot. Thass me you can hear knockin on the door.’

  ‘It’s all different when I’m talking to you. It all feels so quiet. Oh, come here, please. It’s only a short drive from you. It’s number 11 Watergate Street, opposite Commander Pryke’s.’

  For a long time the other man was silent. Then he said: ‘That’s you—Greg?’

  ‘You don’t know me,’ Greg said. ‘Do you? No, you don’t know me.’

  ‘I’ve sin you about,’ the man said, ‘once or twice, but that was months ago. You haven’t been there all that time, have you? On your own? Christ, boy, you must be out of your tree by now.’

  ‘I used to be clever, in a way,’ Greg said, ‘about acting so that people wouldn’t worry about me, and so be a worry, as people are, you know. Diana and Harry just thought: “Well, that’s Greg, he’s always been quiet and a bit spineless and always had his head in the clouds.” But it wasn’t true; I wasn’t quiet, like they thought. It was only when I started talking to you that I got quiet.’

  After a long pause the man said: ‘Listen, Greg, this is all very confoosin. Like you say yourself, you and me never knoo each other, so that beats me why I’m the one you want to talk to. But I think thass not a bad idea, even at this time of night. So I shall come, boy, but not just this minute.’

  ‘Oh, that’s great,’ Greg said. ‘That’s really great. I’ll leave the front door on the latch and the lights on, and you can just walk upstairs to Paul’s room, you know, and I’ll probably be asleep in his chair, you know, just the way it was.’

  There was an intake of breath at the other end of the line, and the man said: ‘Greg, I never was inside that house in my life.’

  ‘It’s very good of you,’ Greg said, seeming not to have heard him, ‘because it must sound so silly. But things were going wrong. I was getting so—agitated, and so—hostile,
and—spiteful. But now I’m quite quiet, and I’m going to sleep for a little while, until you come, Sam.’

  He replaced the receiver, and going downstairs to the street-door, removed the chain, freed the bolts and snibbed the Yale lock open. In the room above the lighted hall he found a cushion for the back of his brother’s chair, and sat down and closed his eyes.

  Painter.

  And is this the end?

  Hieronimo.

  Oh no, there is no end; the end is death and madness.

  The Spanish Tragedy

  In his sleep the thin youth has sprawled in the chair. His long legs stretch out in untidy angles towards the open door. His head droops against the cushion, mouth open in the scanty beard.

  The dark figure standing a few feet within the doorway says loudly, grimly: ‘Greg.’

  The boy starts alert, and takes up a position sitting on the edge of the chair, hands on sharp knees, sharp elbows akimbo. He stares up into the other face, with dread at first, but soon begins to laugh.

  ‘You thought it was someone else,’ he says, ‘didn’t you? Oh, you did. But I’m taller and thinner, and my hair’s fairer, and my beard doesn’t grow the same way.’

  ‘What do you want, Greg?’ the other man asks, with no expression.

  The youth makes excessive gestures of ignorance, shrugging, spreading his hands. He asks after a moment: ‘Why don’t you come nearer, Sam? You look scared. Are you scared?’

  Sam says: ‘Listen, boy, I int no kamikaze. I dint come here on my own.’

  The boy looks with a sort of horror at him, and beyond him, and then jumps up, screaming in a boy’s voice. ‘You black fucking toe-rag,’ he screams, ‘you ignorant fucking jungle-bunny, that wasn’t what I told you to do.’ In his hand is a long shining knife from the kitchen. ‘I told you to come like the other times.’

  ‘Stay there!’ Sam shouts over his shoulder, and turning back to the boy, who has kept the same distance between them, he asks angrily: ‘Less get this clear, young sir. Are you accoosin me, in front of witnesses, of the murder of your brother?’

  ‘Accusing?’ the boy says. ‘I’m only telling you that I know. We all know. The Commander told me what people were saying. I said to the Commander: “What disgusting racial prejudice,” I said, just like a liberal. But when he was dead and I heard all the details, well, I knew. I couldn’t doubt it. Of course it was you, everyone knows that.’

  The black man is so utterly still that for a long time after the boy has stammered into silence there is no stir in the room. At last he asks: ‘Whass the knife for, Greg?’

  ‘The knife?’ repeats the boy, vaguely. ‘I don’t know, really. I just got used to having it near my hand when I went to sleep.’

  ‘It’s a big old house,’ Sam suggests. ‘You’ve been lonely, I should imagine.’

  ‘Ah, lonely,’ the boy says. ‘It’s not good. You start to get funny ideas, do you know? You say things you don’t mean. Calling you raghead and coon and so on, that wasn’t me, it’s not how I think, I hope you believe that, Sam. I’ll tell you what it was, it was that I thought it would be nice to have an argument with you. Because it’s been lonely, for years it has.’

  Suddenly he claps the hand not holding the knife to his eyes. ‘Oh Christ,’ he gasps, ‘oh Christ, it’s starting.’ He breaks into racking sobs, and the black man leaps at him, snatching the knife, throwing it away. But at that the boy begins to flail and scream, screaming: ‘Not like that, not with the knife!’ as they clinch and fall to the carpet.

  Other figures bound into the lighted room from the darkened landing. But there can be no more doubt in their minds than there is in the black man’s that the howling, kicking child restrained in his arms is a mad child now for ever.

  5

  CRACKS

  Harry said: ‘It’s like them cases you read about in the paper: like some little old cottage in a village that people walk past every day, and that look just the same as thass always looked, and nobody give it a thought. And then one day someone call, a meter-reader p’rhaps, and it come out that old Mrs Thing has been dead for a month, and everybody’s amazed. I tell you what, Arthur, I’m amazed. I dint see a thing. I say to myself, I say: Well, these stoodent types, they’re essentric, they’re happy just playin their guitars and readin books. It was just like that cottage I was talkin about, and me gooin past and givin a wave to the window every now and then, while someone inside was dyin and wouldn’t tell me.’

  ‘You can’t be blamed, Harry,’ Arthur said. ‘If his sister-in-law stayed there with him and didn’t notice anything, no one’s going to say that you should have seen more.’

  ‘She weren’t to blame, neither,’ Harry said, moodily. ‘Poor girl was kept in the dark, like. We know that now. Paul was that close, he never let on to her that he was worried about his little brother. Funny, innit, how we say “cracked” without thinkin what the word mean? You see, when Greg was a schoolboy he start foolin around with this what they call “acid”, and have what they call a “bad crossin” or something like that, and his mind was cracked, like, and in the end that just brook along the crack. And Diana never knoo, o’ny now it come out, when thass too late to do anything. Now she find that a couple of Paul’s friends knoo about it from him a long time agoo. But they dint know Greg, and anyway they thought that was a thing of the past and all cleared up now. Well, that weren’t.’

  Arthur said: ‘Will he always be like that?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Harry said. ‘I mean, the experts, they don’t seem to know. What I gather, Greg int with us, properly speakin, now. Diana think he might stay like that. These friends of Paul’s, they’ve told her that what used to worry Paul was there was something like that in their mother’s family, before this “acid” was even invented. But he must have thought the danger had passed, like, before he even met Diana, prob’bly, and she never heard a word about it. Well, you wouldn’t, would you, if you was courtin, tell the girl that your great-aunt Mabel finished up in a rubber room and your brother might be goonna follow.’

  ‘You were there,’ Arthur said. ‘How did that come about?’

  ‘Black Sam come and got me,’ Harry said. ‘Me and Dave, he asked us both to come. And then Frank De Vere, he was drivin Donna home and he see Sam’s taxi outside my place, so he stop, and it end up with us all gooin. Christ, I wish we’d of kept Donna out of it. I dunno how much there is between her and Sam, but there’s something, and that weren’t nice, I can tell you, to be standin beside her while her fella was gettin all them, like, bigoted insults from Greg, and bein called a murderer as well. That wouldn’t have been a pretty scene, anyway, but with her takin it all in that was that much worse.’

  In the other bar a fisherman began to sing, to the tune of ‘Land of My Fathers’:

  ‘Whales! Whales!

  They’re bloody great fish in the sea…’

  Harry, cheering up, leaned towards the doorframe and bawled: ‘Hey, Beaky, you ought to sing solo. So-low we can’t fuckin hear you.’

  The fisherman concluded: ‘And they come to the surface to pee.’

  ‘Things are getting back to normal,’ Arthur remarked. ‘We even see some ladies now, and the gents have got brave enough to use the Gents again. Somehow everyone seems to have decided the shooting’s stopped.’

  ‘I know why that is,’ Harry said, gloomy once more. ‘The ones what weren’t already sure in their minds it was some foreign seaman have pinned it on to Greg now.’

  ‘You can’t blame them,’ said Arthur. ‘Well, I can’t, because it’s what I’ve been thinking myself.’

  ‘Then you’re wrong,’ Harry said angrily. ‘Sorry, Arthur, didn’t mean to snap at you. But talk sense, boy. You’re not thinkin who that was what got killed. You can’t believe he’d hurt them—them three particular people—or anyone else, for that matter. That poor sad kid, his trouble was he was just too harmless to survive in this world. And he int survived, poor little sod.’

  ‘Yes, but Harry,’ Arthur re
asoned, ‘he’s out of his mind. You can’t argue like that in a case like this.’

  ‘I know a lot of people want to believe it,’ Harry said. ‘I’m pretty sure, and so is Diana, the police want to believe it. P’rhaps he’ll end up believin it himself, and forget about Black Sam. But I int goonna believe it: I just know that int in the boy.’

  ‘Why Sam?’ Arthur wondered. ‘Why him rather than me, for instance, or you?’

  ‘That might be my fault,’ Harry said. ‘When this thing started, people were whisperin in corners that it could be Sam, among others. You must have heard that. Well, I reckon this rumour got round to Greg and stuck in his mind. I don’t remember ever sayin anything about it to him, but—oh Jesus, Arthur, I think I must have.’

  ‘I don’t believe it,’ Arthur said. ‘Not to him, Paul’s brother. Nobody would.’

  ‘I dunno,’ Harry said. ‘A lot of times people just talk without thinkin who they’re talkin to. Believe me, I know. Some nights I sit up and I think about them people—my friends—and the tears come into my eyes, I int ashamed to tell you. And then young Dave will come hoom with a foo beers in him and want to tell me some joke that I s’ppoose would crease me if I weren’t twice his age, and my hand fair itch to smack him. Thass three months nor more now he’s been livin at mine, and he show no sign of movin on. Well, thass all right, I s’ppoose—on’y I never felt I understood that boy since he got to be about fourteen. Sometimes he get my rag out, talkin about Greg. Thass all “I told you so” with Dave. I took him with me once when I give Greg a look, and now he tell me he knoo all along what was up. “I could see he was a head-banger,” he say; “why couldn’t you?” I mean, that don’t seem natural, when they’re the same age. There ought to be more fellow-feelin.’

  ‘I think,’ said the old man, ‘that’s something that’s in most people, but in a few it just isn’t. A kind of imagination that’s lacking. He might be better off without it. In the war, I came to the conclusion I had too much of it, myself.’