31st Of February

by Julian Symons

  Anderson felt suddenly a quite overwhelming anxiety simply to get rid of the Inspector at any cost. “I should say she was a damned fool,” he answered harshly, “and was going the right way to make Fascists out of her children.”

  Surprisingly the Inspector laughed. “You’d be perfectly right. I made it all up.”

  “What?”

  “All that stuff I was saying just then. The wife’s thoughts don’t rise above the kitchen sink. I was curious just to see what you’d say. It’s getting late.” At last, at last, Anderson thought. The Inspector stretched like a hippopotamus and yawned. “But somehow I don’t feel tired. Insomnia, that’s my trouble; one of my troubles, I should say. Do you mind if I have another little drop of Scotch?” He poured a drink and wandered about the room, stopping to peer out into the street. “Not what you’d call a very salubrious neighbourhood. But I suppose there’s no accounting for tastes. One man’s meat is another man’s poison, as they say. How are you getting on at the office?”

  “The office?” Anderson lay back exhausted. As he did so his eyelids, like a doll’s thick lids that shutter the staring eye when it is laid flat, closed.

  “Everything all right, not feeling the strain or anything like that? You look as if you’re feeling the strain, you know. But Philosophical, too. I feel in a way it’s my business, and sometimes it worries me.”

  Behind the closed lids Anderson could see the Georgian writing desk. Put your hand inside, open the secret drawer and there, in the mind’s eye, was the black book with its marbled edges. In the mind’s eye, ah yes, in the mind’s eye.

  Order got to be preserved; we’re all agreed on that, I hope,” the Inspector said, rather as if he were addressing a public meeting. “But how far are we justified in using disorder to preserve it? That’s the kind of question that worries me when I can’t sleep. Supposing a man’s arrested on suspicion, now; you know as well as I do that the boys give him a little going over on the way to the station. Very useful it is, too, often enough, in taking the starch out of them. But is it right? That’s the thing I’ve started worrying about in my old age.”

  The doll’s lids flickered. “Ethically no. Practically yes.”

  “I’m very glad to hear you say so – because practice makes ethics, doesn’t it? Though I’m out of my depth even when I’m thinking about this kind of thing, let alone talking about it. Still, methods like those wouldn’t be any use in dealing with a superior man such as yourself, say. Would they?”

  “They might extract a confession. Isn’t that always what you’re after?”

  The Inspector’s voice was plaintive. “It certainly is not, Mr Anderson. Only incidentally. A policeman is like God. He wants to know the truth. And he’s bound to believe that any means are justifiable – any means, do you understand me – if he can find the truth through them. The truth, the clean and perfect truth – that is what we shall reach tomorrow if not today, next year if not tomorrow. The truth!”

  The voice was suddenly loud, and like a bell. Anderson opened his eyes and saw the Inspector standing, overcoated, in front of his chair. Seen from this angle and at this moment, he was no longer a comic figure. The deep vertical lines that ran down the cheeks were cruel: the pudgy features had assumed a coherent severity; power and the will to use it lay in the great bald skull. For a moment Anderson lay defenceless, sprawled in his chair, ready for raping by this ogre of order. From behind his back the Inspector then brought forth – not a whip, but his bowler hat. Clapping upon his head this symbol of order the Inspector turned upon a respectable black heel. “Good night.” The words rang through the disorderly room. The front door closed. For perhaps five minutes Anderson lay in the armchair, deprived of movement, looking at the writing desk. It does not matter, he told himself, whether the notebook is there or not. What does the notebook say, after all? It says our marriage was not ideally happy – but what marriage is happy? No, no, he told himself, the notebook does not matter in itself. But which of them could have wanted something in this flat so badly that they committed burglary to get it? Lessing? Reverton? Vincent? Wyvern? But Vincent was ruled out, was he not, by the fact that he had been in Anderson’s company? Lessing, Reverton, Wyvern? Or – remember the open door, the figure pulling up the long pants – Pile? Ridiculous, ridiculous.

  Like a sleepwalker, Anderson moved over to the writing desk, fumbled, found the protusion, pushed. The secret drawer opened. It was empty.

  9

  Awake, it seemed that he was still asleep. His feet touching the floor had the lightness of a dream; but entirely real was the pain that beat in his head, and the tightness of his face, which felt as if it had been coated with varnish. He applied Hey Presto and wiped it off. He felt absolutely nothing, for the varnish was apparently impermeable, but the blue growth on his chin disappeared magically. The toast he cooked and ate, the coffee he boiled and drank, had similarly no taste or smell. An automaton pushed food and drink into its mouth.

  This numbing of the senses continued on his way to the office. The omnibus came noiselessly along the street; he saw but did not hear the click of the conductor’s punch. He stood between a fat woman who breathed in and out, deeply but apparently noiselessly, and a figure holding a newspaper. This figure was interesting. Two delicate hands were visible at either side of the paper which faced Anderson, and occasionally an edge of the paper flicked his face. It became important to Anderson that he should see this newspaper holder. The hands seemed to be those of a woman, and yet the trousers, as he saw on looking down, were a man’s. A woman in slacks? Anderson swayed forward against the newspaper, but it remained obstinately raised. When somebody by his side got out he said, although to him the words remained inaudible, that there was a seat vacant. The figure accepted the seat, without for an instant lowering the paper. Infuriatingly, when the man-woman sat down, somebody else pushed against Anderson and he was still unable to see over the newspaper barrier.

  The figure rose, still holding the paper before its face – and then in a flash the paper was folded and the figure, presenting its back to Anderson, was on its way out of the bus. Excuse me, Anderson said, excuse me, but by the time he reached the end of the bus the figure had dropped off and was running across the road concealed in a duffle coat which effectively concealed sex as well as identity. Anderson jumped off the bus. For a moment a taxi was in front of him, then it swerved aside and he saw the driver’s shaken fist.

  Running, running across the wide road he saw the figure, ahead of him, enter an office block. He ran in after it and found with astonishment that he was in the reception hall of Vincent Advertising. The figure sat at the reception desk with its back to him, but turned as he approached the desk. The newspaper still held in front of the face was slowly lowered, and behind it he saw the laughing features of Molly O’Rourke. He stood still in astonishment. She bowed her head in mock acknowledgement, showing all her fine teeth in laughter, and then pointed down the corridor toward his room. He ran down the corridor and at the first bend turned to look at Molly. He could see nothing but the newspaper held at the edges by two delicate hands.

  When he reached the door of his room Anderson paused with one hand on the door handle, and then dramatically swung the door open with such violence that it struck the inside wall (but noiselessly, noiselessly). He saw then how he had been deceived, for a figure stood by the desk, back to him, and this figure also was wearing a duffle coat. Slowly, very slowly, the figure turned to face him, and Anderson saw, with a shock that was yet no surprise, the round face of Charlie Lessing. Lessing, too, was smiling, and he held in one hand, waving it with gentle mockery back and forth, a letter from Val. Even across the room Anderson could recognize the blue paper and the careless handwriting.

  “You!” Anderson cried, and for the first time heard his own voice. “You, you. you!” Lessing stood there by the desk, waving the letter, smiling. His smile did not waver even when Anderson in a great spring across the room had him by the throat, forcing the hate
d face further and further away from him over the desk, gripping tighter and tighter the flexible round neck above which the gums still showed in a ghastly smile, while from the pink gullet came wild and agonized screams, while the eyeballs started outward and the throat screamed, while the face reddened and the throat screamed and screamed and screamed…

  The screams echoed in his head long after he woke and lay staring at the ceiling in the half light of early morning. A nightmare, he thought; it was nothing but a nightmare; there was no reason to think badly of Molly or of Lessing because in a dream he had invested them with diabolical smiles. He straightened up in bed and saw that the hands of the alarm clock said half past five. On the floor lay Val’s photograph, out of its frame. He picked it up, put it by the bedside lamp, switched on the light and stared at it. The eyes looked lovingly back at him, the full mouth was smiling.

  The 28th of February

  When one wakens after a nightmare, actuality may seem unreal. Anderson opened his eyes to see a patch of sunlight on the bed. His head ached violently and the skin of his face felt tight. The time by his alarm clock was twenty-five minutes to ten. This is another dream, he thought, and turned over in bed. But his head was still aching, the skin of his face still felt drawn. He stretched, yawned, closed his eyes, and then rolled over again to look at the clock. Twenty-five minutes to ten. He picked up the clock, and shook it, but it continued to tick. Had he forgotten to wind the alarm, or had it failed to wake him? The question was academic beside the fact that he was extremely late.

  He jumped out of bed, washed hurriedly, applied Hey Presto to his face. In the dream, he thought, I felt nothing; it was as though my face were covered with varnish. Then when he removed the Hey Presto he felt none of the pricking or burning sensation that had accompanied previous applications – nothing except, perhaps, a slightly increased facial tension. It was not pleasant to have the dream pattern so nearly approached; fortunately his senses of touch and hearing appeared to be unimpaired. He had no time to discover whether his sense of taste was still functioning, because he left without eating breakfast. He put on a raincoat and his second-best black hat, and threw over his arm the overcoat collected at the party. When he had closed his own front door he remembered the Fletchleys. Elaine would be at Woman Beautiful by now, but he ought to apologize to Fletchley for the blow on the jaw. His wrist watch, however, said a quarter to ten. He decided to telephone later.

  The sense of unreality stayed with him as he ran to the corner and jostled on to a bus. He stood; and there, sure enough, as in the dream, the person standing next to him held a newspaper in front of his face. The bus stopped abruptly and threw them against each other; Anderson, with a movement apparently involuntary, pushed at the newspaper and it was lowered immediately to reveal a petulant, small, indeterminately male face quite unknown to him. The journey continued without incident. Anderson jumped off the bus and ran across the road to the office. At the desk sat not duffled Molly O’Rourke but pneumatic Miss Detranter. She called to him, but Anderson, one hand raised in greeting, hurried down the corridor. At the door of his own room he paused with one hand on the handle, as he had paused in the dream. He flung open the door, and was surprised when it struck the inside wall with a crash. That was a surprise; but he received a shock that took him back to the dream when he saw Lessing standing by the desk. Lessing had his arm round a girl who was crying on his shoulder. He looked extremely uncomfortable, and on Anderson’s appearance said with relief: “Here he is.” He saw that the girl was Jean Lightley.

  “Oh, Mr Anderson,” she said. “Oh Mr Anderson.” Her speech failed in a series of gasps.

  Anderson took off his hat and raincoat and put the overcoat over a chair. The telephone rang. He moved over to pick it up and Jean Lightley called: “Don’t answer it.” She put her head back on Lessing’s shoulder.

  “Listen,” Lessing said. “This is what’s happened. It’s pretty rough. Yesterday you wrote a stalling note to Bagseed about the drawings he’d sent back for correction. And you also wrote a fair stinker to old Crashaw. Well, somehow the letters got mixed up.” At these words Jean Lightley, who had shown signs of recovery, burst into great hiccoughing sobs. “Raper of Kiddy Modes has been on raising hell. That’s probably him on the line now.”

  Anderson listened carefully to what Lessing was saying; and yet he could not forget that the villain of the dream was this same Lessing, spectacled, uncurious, amiable Lessing, who now looked at him with such friendly concern. The telephone rang again.

  “You don’t seem very worried,” Lessing said. “I wonder if I’ve made it clear. Shall I take this call?”

  With a supreme effort Anderson brought himself back to reality, this kind of reality, the reality of advertising and of holding down a good job. He put on even (but with what an effort, what an effort) the mask of language and of manner that had served him so well in the past. “I’ll handle it,” he said. “Get that weeping Jenny out of here. No, wait a minute; I want a copy of the letter I wrote to Crashaw.”

  Jean Lightley removed the handkerchief from her face long enough to say: “It’s on the desk.” Then she ran wailing from the room. Lessing sat at one corner of the desk and swung his leg.

  Bagseed’s voice was quaveringly severe. “Mr Arthur would like to speak to you. Please hold the line.” Anderson stared at Lessing’s foot. A voice like ice water dripped into the telephone, “Mr Anderson, this is Arthur Raper speaking.”

  “How are you, Mr Raper,” Anderson said heartily. “A long time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you.”

  The voice said politely: “That can be remedied. Perhaps you will make it convenient to come up and see me now…”

  “Right, Mr Raper. I’m just making some inquiries about —”

  The voice said: “Now, please, Mr Anderson.”

  “I should like ten –” The line went dead. Lessing got up. He was plaintive. “I wanted to talk to you about Hey Presto. How’s the personal test doing? You look a bit funny.”

  “What do you mean, funny?” He could feel the tightness of the skin round his cheekbones.

  “Strained or something, I dunno. Are you going up now? Is there anything I can do to help out?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Yes, there is.” Anderson remembered the Crunchy-Munch conference fixed for ten-thirty.

  “Will you present those two Crunchy-Munch schemes instead of me?” Lessing nodded. “Strictly anonymous, you know. They don’t know anything about them yet.”

  “Strictly anonymous,” Lessing said and winked. “But I shall do my best on my own behalf. I say, the Crunchy-Munch meeting won’t take long. There’s something on this morning at eleven-fifteen, Board Meeting or something. Rev’s saying nothing, but looking full of it. Maybe they’re going to give us all a raise.”

  “Maybe.” Anderson put on his raincoat.

  “I say,” Lessing’s curiosity seemed inexhaustible this morning. “That your coat on the chair?”

  “Why?”

  It looks uncommonly like one Greatorex wears, that’s all. Got a paint mark on the sleeve like his. Good luck. Don’t let Raper rape you.”

  “Thanks,” Anderson went along to the secretaries’ office where Jean Lightley sat red-eyed, staring at her typewriter. Anderson said kindly: “Jean, I’m sorry I blew off. I’m going up to see Kiddy Modes now.” She looked up at him. Her underlip was quivering. “While I’m up there I want you to find out exactly what happened about these two letters, just how they got sent to the wrong people. Try and trace them right from the moment I handed them to you yesterday after-noon. It’s not a question of responsibility; I just want to find out what happened. Understand?” he nodded, As he closed the door he heard a fresh storm of sobbing.

  2

  Arthur Raper was a small grey man wearing a neat bow tie, who would have been identifiable as a rather respectable elderly clerk if one had met him in the street. But he was not now in the street, but behind a large desk in a large room. To one side
of the desk, springing up from an uncomfortable chair at Raper’s command, was Bagseed, a stringy, indigestible, nervous, old-middle-aged kind of man, obviously nervous for the security of his job. At the other end of the room, separated from Mr Raper and his henchman by some yards of mulberry carpet, sat Anderson, bolt upright on the edge of an overstuffed chair. In a thin, polite, exhausted voice Mr Raper said:

  “I am going to read you a letter, and I want you to tell me what you think of it.” With a little cough he picked up a sheet of paper from the desk. It was, Anderson saw, the letter to Crashaw. “Dear Crashaw,” Mr Raper said. He read the letter very slowly, pronouncing each syllable with care. At the word “pest-i-len-tial” Bagseed shook his head gravely, at in-com-pe-tent, irr-el-ev-ant and im-mat-er-i-al,” he plucked with dry fingers at his skinny neck. Mr Raper did not speak loudly, and at the other end of the room Anderson did not hear him very well, but he tried to give the impression of a keen and interested executive. It was necessary to crawl, he had decided in the taxi, but it would be fatal to crawl too fast or too far. We’re all human, that was the line, we all blow our top sometimes and write things we regret five minutes afterward. So when Mr Raper asked him to give an opinion of this document Anderson said firmly: “I take full responsibility for writing that letter, Mr Raper.”

  “Are you proud of your handiwork?”

  “Far from it. I don’t want to excuse writing such a letter. But I’d like to explain it.” Anderson launched the speech he had prepared in the taxi. “That letter, sir, was the product of a week at the office in which we haven’t known whether we are on our heads or our heels. It’s the kind of letter all of us sit down and write a few times in our lives. Five minutes after we’ve written it we regret it. If we’re sensible enough to delay posting it for half an hour we look at it again – and tear it up. I’ll be frank, and say I wish I’d done that. I’ll be franker still, and say that when Mr Bagseed received the letter and saw the kind of thing it was, and that it had come to him by mistake, I should have expected him to read it, laugh at it, tear it up, and perhaps write me a line saying that we were the most pestilential advertising agents he’d ever dealt with.” Mr Bagseed’s hands clutched at his high, old-fashioned collar as though he were being strangled.