by John Lodwick
“The only trouble about having more money than your circumstances make plausible,” he said, “is that you can’t carry it about with you in office hours. A lot of people get caught that way. They simply invite investigation. But not this young man. When he played poker he took very good care to do so in carefully chosen company. All crooks are exhibitionists, but this one kept his good suits and his gold cigarette case for the evenings. Immunity from danger had not, in his case, bred over-confidence.”
He stopped talking. “Do you know why I’m telling you all this?” he said. “It’s because you won’t tell anybody else.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of sneaking,” said the child.
Rumbold laughed. “That’s about all,” he said. “I won’t tire you with my tin-hat stories. I’ll keep them for your cousins. Let’s talk of something else, shall we? . . . I met your mother not so long ago.”
“But she’s in bed. How could you have seen her?”
“Not that one. Not the pale invalid who can’t conceive. I’m talking of your real mother now. You didn’t know you had one, did you?”
“Yes,” said the child surprisingly. “I did. Our gardener told me on my birthday, when I was seven. He’s the only one who remembers me coming here as a baby. He said it was a shame for me to grow up not knowing it. But he made me promise not to tell anybody else.”
“Well, isn’t it a shame?” said Rumbold. “Don’t you sometimes lie awake at night and think about it? Don’t you wonder what your real name is, and where you were born, and why they got rid of you like that . . . never coming to see you, never writing, not even caring whether you’re still alive or not?”
He had expected tears, but no tears came. The boy sat looking downwards, his fingers plucking at the grass.
“No, I don’t,” he said. “If they sent me away they must have had a reason, and I bet it was a horrid one. I’m quite happy here and I don’t have to love Denis and Michael, either, now that I know they’re not my real cousins.”
“Your mother’s very beautiful,” said Rumbold. “Would you like to see a picture of her?” From his wallet he took snapshot a fortnight old: Fiona on the steps of the Aviz in Lisbon.
“Look,” he said. “See how like you she is.”
“No,” said the boy. “No, I don’t want to.” He thrust away the hand which held the photograph, but Rumbold seized him by the shoulders, forcing him to look.
“You can pretend she’s the Queen of Portugal,” he said. “I promise you she’s just as fickle.”
“Leave go,” said the boy. “You’re hurting me.”
“No leaving go now my little one. No more little games, no more pretending. We’re face to face with reality now . . . both of us, and both for the very first time.”
Again he looked at his watch. The time was now well after twelve.
“Come,” he said rising.
“No.”
“Come.”
The boy began to run, but Rumbold, sprinting, caught him and swung the frail body upwards in his arms.
“What do you want?” said the boy. “What are you trying to do? I’ll tell my father.”
“There’s only God the Father now,” said Rumbold. “I’m sorry it had to happen this way. I’m sorry I had to frighten you, when with a single push. . . .”
He stopped. The boy had scratched his face.
“Ah, tu deviens méchant,” he said. He pressed the boy’s body closer so that he could scratch no more.
“No, please stop screaming,” he said. “I tell you that’s the way it was ordained. In matters of this kind I have to drive myself to a point where only the chosen solution remains. You can see that, can’t you? Don’t be afraid of death. It’s nothing . . . nothing at all. I’ve half a mind to join you. Come now . . . let’s get it over. Then I’ll pray.”
The boy screamed only once again, this time as he fell, but the sound of that scream still echoed among the cavities of the lonely cliffs when his body lay inert among the rocks.
Rumbold picked up the cricket bat, and smoothed over the traces of his footsteps and of the struggle. Then he set off at a brisk pace towards Salcombe. From time to time he dabbed with his handkerchief at his face.
Shortly after he had gone, another man began to make his way from the cliffs towards the Salcombe road.
Eleven
“Pardon.”
What . . . going to the toilet again? This was the second time within an hour. The woman must be suffering from colic. He was about to push open the sliding door for her when she trod on his toe. Leaning back in the obscurity he pretended to be asleep. Never take a seat adjoining the corridor.
The carriage was obscurely lit. The train rolled somewhere in the desert between Exeter and Reading. The fug was appalling: why did English people never think of opening a window nowadays? An aftermath of the war, no doubt . . . Pull the blinds down . . . Mind the black-out. The black-out had gone, but the closed window which had been part of it remained. It was the same with everything. Bloody sheep! Rumbold scowled at a sleeping major who, with Sam Browne unhitched and tie awry, snored placidly against a patch of ginny moisture on the glass. Strip them all naked, that was what he would like to do . . . strip them to the buff and watch them fight for the two fig-leaves which he would place upon the luggage rack.
He opened his flask and drank, then lit a cigarette. Things had not gone badly, though he wouldn’t care to pass a second afternoon like that one in the hotel lounge; fidgeting, fingering then setting down the China shepherdesses, flicking the pages of dog-eared magazines, speckling the fire-grate with a score of cigarette butts. “Not going out this afternoon, Mr. Gurney?” “No, I don’t think so. I have a slight cold.” The telephone call had not come until after five o’clock, when, in desperation, he had already ordered tea. “Hullo . . . is that you, Gurney? Vivian this end. Look here, old man, I’m sorry but I can’t ask you to come up shooting to-morrow. There’s been a dreadful accident. My nephew’s been killed.”
Killed? A fist had closed round Rumbold’s heart at that word. But no! It was just the man’s unfortunate way of expressing himself. Everything was quite in order. Boys will be boys remained the official explanation. Decorous expressions of sympathy on Rumbold’s part. Would they be seeing him again at Vivian’s? . . . it would be quite all right after the funeral, especially as he seemed to have made a big hit with the boys. Well, no, he was damned sorry but he had to get up to town within forty-eight hours. One of those sudden recalls. Back to the old office desk. Perhaps next time. . . .
Next time, indeed! Grinning and light of heart, he had made discreet enquiries in the town. Yes, the ambulance had been sent out as soon as the news came through at two o’clock. A farm-hand had discovered the body and rigged up some kind of contraption of pulley and ropes with which to hoist it to the summit of the cliffs. The remains now lay, snug and be-sheeted, in the municipal mortuary. There would be an inquest, of course, but what was the good of that with the poor little lad a shapeless mass upon a cold stone slab? There were no two ways about it, declared public opinion: the father was mean. Ten pounds it would have cost him to put barbed wire along the cliff top. Now he must spend three times that amount in black ties and crepe and coffins. Rumbold’s informant, an ironmonger, showed him a stack of the barbed wire in question, with gloomy satisfaction.
“Pardon.” Ah, the bitch had finished, and suffering, no doubt, from night blindness, trampled at random among the out-flung feet. A sudden lurch of the train sent her into Rumbold’s lap. Suspender belt too low, he thought. “Pardon,” she said again. “Don’t mention it,” said Rumbold. Opposite, the major, whose ideas upon the amenities to be expected from first-class carriages were sound, had got his feet up. Blanket drill. The major was enjoying his kip enormously, oblivious of the fact that he had swiped the lady’s seat. “Do you mind i
f I sit here?” she whispered. “Not at all,” he said. Her profile, against the light, was charming, the clothes somewhat dowdy. A clergyman’s daughter, perhaps? Good Works, in any case, but willing. Her thigh was closer than need be to his own.
He drank. “Like a little?” he said. “I’m sorry I’ve no cup.” She looked at him doubtfully while the others slept. “Go on,” he urged. “It’s whisky . . . very warming.” He extended the flask, and touched her hand, playing clever-clumsy. He watched her tilt it back, noticing with amusement the movement which she made, then checked, to wipe the orifice. In that class, the dread of syphilis is inborn.
And the trip made by taxi to the farm. Never content to leave well alone, that was him. “I know all this is most irregular, but I just had to come.” The embarrassment of Vivian, the plum cake baked before the tragedy and now cut in slices thin as Communion wafers in honour of it. The mistress of the house was absent once again; this time decanting bromide at the bedside of the bereaved mother. The boys, clad in their best suits, were forbidden the exit to the dung-strewn farmyard.
“No shooting for at least a week,” said Denis, when his father had gone to take a leak. “I always knew he’d fall over,” said Michael. “Silly little fool.”
Yet in his eyes Rumbold read a new respect for the victim. To slip, to fall eighty feet and bash one’s brains out . . . after all, there was much more in that than swopping conkers. “And he might have got his colours at hockey next term,” said the elder boy, who, to Rumbold’s surprise, proved the more emotionally susceptible of the two.
Ah! The world of childhood, the conventions of the adult superimposed by force and Eton collars upon the instincts of the savage. “Making mud pies! It’s so charming to see them playing with sand,” but if mother knew that the little mind was playing with s—t, she might have very different ideas.
“Come back,” the elder boys had said. “Please come back next hols.” No possibility of doubt in that appeal. Children, not having reached the tax-paying age, remain upon the side of the lawless.
And, of course, he had said that he would, but now he stretched his right hand sideways . . . inch by inch, touching a button on the upholstery provided by the Great Western Railway, then a complicated pattern in relief, then the material of a jacket, then a rib felt through this jacket. Cautious, diffident, always ready to retire, Rumbold’s fingers slipped further. The woman made no movement. Well aware of the proprieties, he left the possibilities of refusal with her. His hand now encircled the waist, climbed, crawled through some lace, made about turn and descended the one-in-three slope of the right breast.
What now? A triumph indeed, but an empty one. Rumbold’s fingers descended further, touched a fold of flesh above the stomach, then became tangled in a hook of some sort designed to maintain the midriff. His flesh was ripped: he felt the blood drop and the woman shiver.
“No,” she said. “No,” and with some reason, for if the light had brightened even slightly, her situation would have been far from enviable.
Rumbold obeyed her. Withdrawing his hand he transferred his attention to her legs which, crossing, stiffening, she attempted to deny him.
These fun and games continued for a certain time; through half of Wilts, through a part of Berks. Presently, however, Rumbold discovered amusement more subtle. He withdrew his hand. He sat back. The gloom was such that the woman could not see his face, and yet he knew she peered, could sense the questing forehead, the fingers on the purse. Rumbold lay back, doggo, his neck against the carriage corner. He breathed quietly, listening for the breathing of the woman, which came now sharp and short and charged with anger. “Ah! tu es mécontente, ma fille? Tu n’aimes pas qu’on te pelote rien que pour te laisser tomber. . . .” On the seat something was moving. It was her hand advancing in conditional surrender. Rumbold lifted the hand, and replaced it firmly in the owner’s lap. At this moment the train, slackening speed, began to enter the labyrinthine approaches to Reading. Lights flashed. A soldier in the corridor raised his kit-bag. The major, groaning, thrashing with his feet, kicked the old lady in the corner. The senile smile of peace upon the face of the old lady changed to a look of righteous indignation. Her umbrella fell . . . could it have been done deliberately? . . . and roused the gentleman with the appearance of a senior civil servant sitting opposite. In a moment the whole carriage was awake. The cruel unshaded light above an extinct book-stall revealed the clot of sleep in the eyes of the major, the intermediate position of the old lady’s denture. Venomous glances were exchanged as the passengers, dreaming of spring beds, returned to grips with muggy reality.
But none more venomous than that directed against Rumbold by the young woman who sat beside him. Watching her covertly, he saw her rise and take her bag. She left the compartment. He followed, leaning out of the corridor window, so that he might the better survey the platform. But no! Reading was not her station. A woman’s pride demanded the last word.
“Not far to London now,” the major said. It was the type of fatuous remark for which the old lady had been waiting. She sniffed.
And crossing London. . . .
Rumbold took the Inner Circle, a circuit loaded at that hour of the morning with night porters, workmen from the power stations and charwomen on their way to scrub an office step. At Waterloo he queued for his scalding cup of tea, and surveyed the indicator. “Alas, Posthumus, the flying years glide by . . .” Six of them since he had last stood on these platforms, with home his destination. He entered the Post Office and sent his telegram: “It is done. I shall be with you Saturday.” He captured a fleeing porter, and had his bag taken to the Guildford train.
Woking, Guildford, Haslemere, then Hampshire. Memories of half-crowns pressed into his hands by uncles and of not over-successful excursions to Christmas pantomines . . . memories of other boys, their holidays over, taking these same trains while he, with satchel filled, trudged to the grammar school, two hundred yards away from home . . . memories of rugger matches upon a sloping pitch with tangential uprights . . . Haslemere 2nd XV versus Linchmere . . . the day the scrum-half kicked him in the crutch and he had lain gasping, retching on the touchline. Memories of a little boy, of a chunky and aggressive youth, of a bank employee with a Daily Telegraph and a fifty-shilling suit . . . memories which had nothing and yet, at the same time, everything to do with the bag-eyed, long-chinned man sitting opposite the workman in blue overalls who travelled first-class because he knew that the ticket-inspector did not come on duty until eight o’clock.
At Guildford Rumbold disembarked. White-toothed, pyjamaed, the advertisement for a dentifrice pursued him; its manner and spirit very different from that of the black-coat workers piling in the train upon the other platform. The ticket-collector spat, was surly . . . no recognition here, though Rumbold had known the man since he had been an apprentice rolling milk churns.
He traversed the clammy tunnel, emerged, whistled to the single taxi on the rank.
“Fourteen, Acacia Road,” he said. The taxi chugged to life, glided past the first blank shop-fronts.
Beyond the High Street, the first suburbs. “Take it easy,” he said to the taxi-driver. “Don’t go right up. You can drop me at the end of the road.” By a pillar-box the driver halted. Rumbold got out, paid, watched the taxi crawl away. From somewhere, a smell of burnt sausages came as a reminder that he was hungry. The road was deserted. This was the hour of breakfast: the exodus of office workers bound for the 8.11 would not take place for another thirty minutes.
Two-storied houses, semi-detached, stuccoed, then overlaid with a brownish gravel substance. Twenty yards of garden frontage; thirty more fenced in at the back among the chicken runs, the rabbit hutches and the Dig-for-Victory plots. The trees which lined the avenue were not acacias as the name implied. They were elms. No acacias had been available at the time of the inauguration of the estate.
Fifty-two houses on
either side, £400 down in 1928, the balance by easy stages. The last man, a Mr. Tyrell, in number six, had paid his whack in 1937. Mr. Tyrell, whose residence was sub-titled “The Moorings”, favoured crazy paving. Nor was he alone in this, though many of his neighbours preferred roses, trellis-work or sun-dials, with a background of small ornamental gnomes from whose eyes the twinkle had long faded and upon whose once-red caps snails and spiders pursued their devious endeavours. Some residents had succeeded in offering all of these amenities in the small space at their disposal, while others—more eccentric—had sunk goldfish ponds, in the waters of which, inimical to piscine life but kind to tadpoles, the green and slimy pancake leaves of lilies floated.
Number two; the Robinsons . . . fishcakes this morning, apparently . . . number four, the Godbys; a small boy, picking his nose upon the doorstep, looked up indifferently before continuing his dissection of a cockroach . . . number six, the Benhams; four bottles of milk now inside the porch indicating the continued virility of the owner . . . number eight, the Hodges (she was said to bully him and, indeed, even at this early hour the lawn mower, the hedge clippers lay in waiting on the path) . . . number ten, the Lockwoods, whose radio, springing to life at dawn, functioned without pause until the midnight anthem.
Five yards from his father’s gate, Rumbold hesitated. Impossible to make his approach by stealth, for all was public here, and already Mrs. Lennard, in number twelve, clutching her dressing-gown, patting hair curlers, had peered between the chintz.
Rumbold lifted the gate latch softly, tiptoed up the path. So far, so good. His parents sat at breakfast, their backs turned to him. He knocked, then rang, then cleared his throat. They would think it was the postman.
