Harry Doing Good

by Canaway, W. H.

  She said, ‘You’ve got to stop, Harry.’

  ‘Stop at Cannock,’ Ann suggested.

  ‘No.’

  They drove through Cannock, Oakengates, Wellington.

  How can he keep it up? Harry thought. He’s as weak as a kitten between times, but then that awful strength takes over. Where does it come from? I’ve got to reach Shrewsbury. Got to. Best for everybody.

  *

  In the casualty department of the hospital the young West Indian doctor took one look at Simon, then had him whisked away out of sight through swing doors which afforded the others a brief glimpse of a long corridor and a whiff of hospital smell. The doors swung to, oscillated, were still.

  Harry said, ‘Will he be all right, Doctor?’

  ‘How long has he been like that?’

  ‘It must be two and a half hours. We were on holiday, see? We didn’t know what to do.’

  The doctor said, ‘Has he been under any stress?’

  Harry shook his head, while Linda thought, He’s only seen two people raped and four people killed, one of them in a very special way, and the man asks if he was under any stress.

  She said, ‘He was in love with me, and I turned him down.’

  ‘I see,’ said the doctor. ‘Now don’t blame yourself. It isn’t your fault.’

  Linda nodded.

  They were shown to a waiting-room, and there they stayed, breaking off for a snack in the Kombi at six o’clock. At half past six, Harry was asked whether Simon’s parents were on the telephone, and he provided the number. The parents were sent for, and arrived just after nine-thirty, the mother stone-faced and stoic in her grief, the father wild-eyed and edgy. But they were too late. Despite all the excellent care he had received since his admission, Simon had died of exhaustion ten minutes before their arrival. The girls were crying, and Simon’s mother’s composure deserted her, so that she broke into a gale of sorrow. Harry stood by self-consciously and awkwardly, while the father found sudden resources of strength, and comforted his wife. No one thought to remark on Peter’s absence.

  A little later on, when she had recovered to some extent, Simon’s mother said to Harry, ‘Thank you for trying to save him, Harry. You did the best you could, I know.’ She wept again, gently, and then went on: ‘I should have kept up his treatment, but he’d seemed so much better.’

  ‘I know,’ Harry said. ‘You weren’t to know, were you? None of us was to know. He seemed to be getting over it. I mean, those little holidays with us were doing him good. Everybody said so.’

  ‘It must have been meant,’ the woman said. ‘If I can find any comfort at all in this, that’s the only thing I can see. It must have been meant.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Harry said. ‘We can’t fathom the ways of the Lord. Who knows what Simon was spared?’

  Or what he went through.

  He told me to drop dead.

  4

  Harry said, ‘Well, that solves the puzzle. We didn’t know what to think when he didn’t turn up.’

  Peter’s mother took back the postcard she had shown him, and put it back on the mantelpiece.

  She said, ‘I was watching the telly the night before he left. Coronation Street, I think it was. I wasn’t really listening to him, but I’d swear he said something about judo.’

  ‘There you are then. He’d been going on at us about it, but we all thought he’d decided to come along with us. He must have changed his mind, that’s all. I just thought I’d call in and see if he was home. I expect he’ll be back later on, with his black belt… Wasn’t it terrible about Simon?’

  ‘Awful,’ Peter’s mother said.

  ‘The funeral’s on Tuesday. You going along?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Harry. These sad occasions are bad for me. I’m glad in a way that Peter didn’t go along with you after all.’

  Harry rotated his single ball bearing between finger and thumb as he smiled pleasantly at Peter’s mother.

  Mustn’t cut it down any more, he thought. A hundred quid. I’ll give it to her for Christmas. Let a decent interval pass by first, then hand it over to keep her going till she gets used to the idea that he isn’t coming back any more.

  ‘Well, I’ll be off, missis,’ he said. ‘Give our regards to Peter when he gets in.’

  *

  Harry went back to work on the Monday, and on the Tuesday morning he took time off to attend Simon’s funeral. The day was fine, with a watery sun, which held little warmth. Harry was one of the bearers, and he walked slowly through the churchyard, his feet crunching on the gravel and the heavy coffin digging into his shoulder. During the burial service Harry caught sight of Linda among the mourners, but of Ann and Cheryl there was no sign. Both Harry and Linda were regular members of the congregation at the church, and the rector spoke to them both after they had eaten a simple cold meal at the school caretaker’s house, along with Simon’s friends and relations. The rector was a sallow little man, with piercing blue eyes, and eyebrows like black prawns.

  ‘A tragic affair,’ he said to Harry. ‘But these things do happen, you know. Promise me you will try not to dwell on the event. As I said in my little address before we left here, we must try to be happy for Simon now.’

  Harry said, ‘Yes, Rector. I’ll try.’

  ‘One thing. Would you be kind enough to act as a sidesman at matins on Sunday? Mr Wilshaw has the ’flu, and I’m sure he would be pleased to know that he has a trusty replacement.’

  ‘Certainly,’ said Harry. ‘Only too glad to be of help. I’ll come to evensong as well if you want me to.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said the rector. ‘Thank you very much.’

  He circulated among the other mourners, and Harry turned to Linda; her eyes were still a little red from weeping.

  She said, ‘Harry. You remember what I told that doctor at the hospital: about turning Simon down?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Very quick thinking I thought that was. It must have been taken into account; no inquest, no fuss.’

  ‘But it was true,’ she said pathetically.

  They spoke quietly, the buzz of general conversation going on around them.

  Harry said, ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘I didn’t turn him down in so many words. I mean, he didn’t propose or anything like that. But I just wanted him as a friend, and he wanted more than that. I can’t help blaming myself. At first I thought it was…all the other things, and I was still thinking like that when we talked with that doctor. But I must have been speaking the truth, Harry. I can remember all sorts of little things: the way he looked at me, and so on. Things a woman notices.’

  She was on the verge of tears once more. Harry considered her carefully.

  ‘You mean you think it really did affect him?’

  Linda nodded dolefully.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I’m certain.’

  Comfort, that’s what she wants, Harry thought. I’ve got to say it’s all the other things he went through, nothing to do with Linda.

  ‘When did all this begin?’ he asked. ‘Before we met those people, or while we were…with them? Or afterwards?’

  ‘Beforehand,’ Linda said. ‘I think it was the first day we were up there.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Harry. ‘I see.’

  ‘I said it could be dangerous for him,’ Linda said. ‘I believed that.’

  ‘Dangerous?’

  She said, ‘Well, sex could have been.’

  Harry said, ‘Well, what about bottling it up? That could have been just as dangerous, couldn’t it?’

  Linda nodded again.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s what I think, but I never thought I’d hear either of us talk like this.’

  Comfort. A shoulder to lean on. Out of the corner of his eye Harry saw Simon’s mother start over towards him.

  Harry said, ‘That’s the way it must have been. You must have hurt him and made him bottle it up. Those other things would have kind of held it all back, and then when we got down from
there, it all broke through again.’

  He turned away from her, leaving her pierced and tormented, and devoted himself for a few minutes to being sympathetically affable with Simon’s mother, who was still grateful for what Harry had done for her son.

  *

  Linda hung the Do Not Disturb notice on the outside of her cubicle door. The room was furnished simply, with a divan bed, a dressing table which doubled as writing table, a stool, a small armchair, a narrow wardrobe, and a little wash-handbasin. An old teddy-bear sat on top of the wardrobe, and a row of books was arranged along the window-sill.

  She closed the door and sat on the bed, her face blank with misery.

  An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. We killed that little man for what he did to us. I slashed him and cut him. Harry said it was justice, and I believed him. I still do. How can I believe anything else? How can I let myself believe anything else? That little, ruined room a red hell of justice. An eye for an eye.

  Simon. Harry meant that I should have accepted Simon, just to help him, just to do him good. Harry wouldn’t have said that at the beginning. But I could have accepted Simon. I had to accept that rotten uncle and that big moron. No choice. And then when I had the choice I wouldn’t say yes. Simon is dead and where does that leave me?

  A tooth for a tooth.

  It would have cost me so little, to have tried to love Simon. I could have made him happy, but I refused. I always tried to look after him, and then when he really needed me, I backed down. He suffered dreadfully, and then he died, and it was my fault. Harry thinks it was my fault.

  A tooth for a tooth.

  Linda stood and opened a drawer of the dressing table, took out the aspirin bottle and closed the drawer.

  ‘It’s old-fashioned,’ she said aloud. ‘But it’s all I’ve got.’

  She went over to the wash-handbasin and filled a glass with cold water, leaving the tap running as she opened the aspirin bottle and began taking the tablets, each with a sip of water. She took thirty tablets, then paused. She went back to the dressing table and opened another drawer, taking out a notepad and ballpoint, then scribbling rapidly. As she finished writing a twinge of discomfort crossed her face, and she put a hand to her stomach. But she returned to the tablets, and took fifty more.

  She lay on the bed, willing herself not to vomit. Eventually the queasy sensations subsided, and she felt drowsy. She closed her eyes. Later she opened them again, and stared up at the teddy-bear on the wardrobe. It had been her companion since early childhood, and she wanted it; but could not bring herself to make the effort to fetch it. And, later still, when she was beyond making any effort at all, she remembered Harry, naked and flaccid in a little spinney, a lark singing and a tractor buzzing in the distance while he watched two lovers through drifts of leaves and flowers; and Harry, bulging and jerking as he tore and sliced in that room of blood. Her eyes opened wide in sudden revelation, her mouth agape, but only for an instant of understanding: the revelation eluded her, slipped away as consciousness ebbed and her eyes closed again.

  *

  ‘Linda?’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Oh, no! I don’t believe it.’

  He pulled Sergeant Waring into the small lobby and shut the door behind him. They were old acquaintances, from the days of the youth club, and had shared disapproval of the possibly queer Mr Lee-Barnes. Sergeant Waring was a policeman of the old school, Dixon of Dock Green to old ladies, provided that they were respectable old ladies; with teenage troublemakers he adopted the well-worn policy of thumping them first and asking questions afterwards. There were not enough teenage troublemakers in the district to force a reversal of the policy.

  Waring had on his civilian clothes. Harry ushered him into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  ‘I can’t realise it,’ he said. ‘What a terrible thing!’

  Sergeant Waring sat at the kitchen table, shaking his head. He was a beefy and rubicund man in his early forties, strong and solid.

  He said, ‘This is an unofficial call, Mr Eckington. There’ll have to be a post mortem and an inquest, but it’s clear enough to me she died of an overdose.’

  ‘Drugs?’ said Harry. ‘Now that I don’t believe. She was not one of that sort.’

  Waring said, ‘Aspirin’s a drug. There was an empty bottle of a hundred in her room. She’d put a Do Not Disturb notice outside, and she’d left a note.’

  Harry was playing with the ball bearing agitatedly.

  ‘A note?’ he said. ‘What kind of a note?’

  ‘Well, I can’t divulge the contents. You know better than that. But you were close to her, so I can say off the record it seems clear to me she took her own life. I mean, you were kind of a leader of a little group, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ Harry said. ‘Poor thing. The last straw, that is. First Simon, and then her. It’s all connected up, mind you.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ Waring asked, his attention sharpening.

  ‘Simon died at Shrewsbury. I remember the doctor at the Queen Alexandra Infirmary asked her if he’d been under any stress. She told him Simon had fallen in love with her, and she’d turned him down.’

  ‘Did she now?’ said Sergeant Waring with interest.

  ‘I went to Simon’s funeral, and Linda told me then she blamed herself for what had happened to him. Of course, I told her not to be so stupid, but she must have taken his death to heart just the same. We’d all been on holiday, you know, and he got taken ill on the way back. An ill-starred trip, that was. Poor Linda, I still find it hard to believe she’s gone.’

  ‘You think she took things too much to heart, and blamed herself for that young chap’s death,’ Waring said, nodding sagely. ‘Between you and me, you may find that the note she left bears that out. You’ll be called on to make a deposition in due course, for the coroner, and we’ll be getting in touch with the doctor who attended that young man. No problems there, Mr Eckington. I must say it was worth my while dropping in on you. You’ve been a deal of help.’

  ‘Well, that’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’ Harry said, as he made the tea.

  They drank their tea and talked of the weather and other general topics: progress of local football teams; Waring’s interest in old-time dancing; the desirability of boxing as a subject in school curricula.

  ‘That reminds me,’ Harry said. ‘Young Peter. Has he turned up yet?’

  Waring shook his head.

  ‘Vanished,’ he said. ‘Vanished without trace. He never went near that judo club; we checked up there first off.’

  ‘Well, what’s happened to him?’ asked Harry. ‘People don’t just disappear into thin air.’

  Sergeant Waring said, ‘Now that’s just where you’re wrong. They do, you know. They vanish all the time.’

  ‘Goon!’

  ‘Hundreds and hundreds every year,’ Waring said impressively. ‘’Course, he might turn up. Some of them do, but you’d be surprised how many are just never heard of any more.’

  With a prickle of dangerous excitement Harry asked, ‘Do you think he might have got killed, then?’

  ‘Might have,’ Waring said. ‘You just don’t know. He might simply have got fed up, felt in a rut — that kind of thing, and decided to start a new life. You can do that if you’ll take casual labour, seasonal work. My guess is that’s what most of these missing persons do. I’ve got a mate with a bee in his bonnet about flying saucers. He thinks aliens from another planet pop down and spirit these people away. Well, I’m a bit more down to earth than that. I think they get brassed off and try to make a fresh start.’

  ‘Yes, I see. Pete’s mother’s a nice enough lady, but it could be she tied him down a bit.’

  Waring said, ‘Now there’s my feelings exactly. He didn’t turn up to join you and your gang, and he sent the old bird a card from Stanmore. It’s ten to one he’s met some dolly down in London, and he’ll be practising a bit of judo with her — in a nice warm bed.’

  ‘Funny, though,’ Harry said. ‘Funny when
you come to think of it. First Peter never turned up, then Simon dying like that, and now poor Linda killing herself. You’d swear there was a curse on us all or something.’

  ‘No,’ Waring said. ‘Things come in clumps. I’ve noticed it meself, dozens of times.’

  ‘Clumps?’

  ‘That’s right. Why d’you think people say, “It never rains but it pours”? It’s a proverb because it’s the truth. Things jog along nicely, then you get a whole clump, all at once, good or bad.’

  ‘Well,’ said Harry. ‘Let’s hope we’ve got to the end of this particular clump.’

  Sergeant Waring gave a small smile of sympathy or understanding, and said, ‘The girl’s parents live in Southampton, and that’s where the funeral will be.’

  ‘Don’t think me hard-hearted,’ Harry said, ‘but I don’t think I’ll go. For one thing I’ve just had a morning off work, and for another, I don’t think I could stand it.’

  ‘I’m sure they’ll understand that. But they’ll want to have a word with you, I expect.’

  ‘Eh? What for?’

  Waring said patiently, ‘You spent a good bit of time with the girl, and that young man. You can talk to them about it. I’m sure they’d appreciate that. Tell you what: I’ll bring them round for a chat; before the inquest or after, it won’t matter.’

  ‘All right,’ Harry said dubiously. ‘I suppose it’s my duty in a way.’

  The sergeant stood up and said, ‘I knew you’d see it like that, Mr Eckington. That was a right good cup of tea.’

  Harry showed him out, and then closed the front door, leaning on it in the lobby. True power, he thought. I’ve been exercising power. Great. They thought they could shove me into a dead end, messing with their lousy middle-class dishwashers, but they don’t know I’ve got power. It’s absolutely right. You can get away with murder.

  A nasty moment when he talked about a note. But I needn’t have worried, and I’m not going to worry any more.

  *

  ‘Linda always spoke well of you in her letters,’ the grey, tiresome woman was saying, while Harry gazed at her benevolently, full of secret contempt. ‘It’s good to meet you at last, even though the circumstances are not what anybody would have chosen.’