by E. C. Tubb
He jerked to sudden pain and scowled at the forgotten cigarette singeing his fingers. Hastily he crushed it out and, half-annoyed with himself for wasting time in idle speculation, rose to his feet. He smiled as he rubbed his tired eyes and stretched his aching muscles. If Smith was right then he should soon have positive proof. He had been driving himself too long and too hard for any self-respecting body to bear and it was about time it protested.
But somehow he didn't think that it would.
Snapping off the desk lamp he thrust the files back into their cabinet, scooped up his cigarettes from the desk and, with a last look round, made his way towards the door.
His ankle turned beneath him on the third stride.
He swore, falling helplessly towards the door, his arms failing as he tried to regain balance, and pain jarred him as he crashed against the jamb. Tensely he examined his shoulder, wincing at the bruised muscle and bone, yet grateful that he had suffered no serious injury. If he hadn’t twisted... If he had landed head-first… Concussion would have been the least he could have expected. Angrily he glared at his ankle.
“Damn you!” he said bitterly. “Are you trying to kill me?”
STATE OF MIND
Just when it had happened he couldn’t tell.
It was strange, when he thought about it, this lack of certainty. When a man has lived with a woman for more than fifteen years she should have no secrets. In that time he should have learned her every gesture, every idiosyncrasy, each eccentricity. He should know her every mannerism, the way she put thoughts into words, the phrases which triggered emotion and the way that emotion was displayed. He should know her every thought.
Well—perhaps not her every thought. There had to be something left between them if they were to remain two, distinct personalities.
Grudgingly he admitted that but, having admitted it, reached the end of his tolerance. So she could have her thoughts but the rest of her, all the little things that made her what she was, he should know them. Know them so well that any trifling divergence from her established pattern of behaviour would have been a flashing alarm and a shouted warning.
And yet, somehow, he had missed that warning.
He watched her as she sat beneath the lamp. She was knitting; she had, he remembered, been fond of knitting but now she seemed to be knitting all the time. He watched the deft way she managed her needles, the efficiency with which her fingers managed the wool, the abstract, almost withdrawn expression on her face.
What was she thinking?
He coughed and sought for something to say. He found it increasingly difficult to make conversation, the words seemed forced, unreal, and yet he couldn’t be blamed for that. It was hard to talk to someone all the time. Hard to talk when they never said anything, volunteered anything. It was, he thought, like shouting into an empty room and hearing only an echo. A man grew tired of echoes.
“What are you knitting?” His voice, be knew, was full of interest and enthusiasm.
“Only a jumper.” Her voice, like her eyes, was dull and empty.
“Another jumper?” Lightness, a touch of humour, a growing interest. “Why don’t you knit something else for a change?”
“I’ll think about it.” The needles clicked busily for a while then: “Anything interesting happened today, Henry?”
Forced, he thought. My God, how forced! What the hell did she care what had happened to him during the day?
“Nothing much.” He picked up the evening paper and hid his face behind its pages. “Just the usual round. You?”
“The same as usual.”
He didn’t comment. The conversation was over. The clicking of her needles punctuated the silence.
When had it happened? It was the when, not the how which worried him. The how was unimportant, it had happened, that was a fact. But when?
There was that incident a few weeks ago. They had gone to a movie, a Western, he thought. It had been a good film with plenty of shooting and lots of fast action. The men were rugged and the women beautiful and he had enjoyed himself for a change. It was, he thought bitterly, one of the few occasions when he had enjoyed himself. He had even, for a little while, managed to forget the nagging worry of trying to keep a basically unsound business solvent for a while longer.
And then had come the incident of the ice cream.
He didn’t like ice cream. He hadn’t been able to enjoy it for years and Susan knew damn well that he didn’t like it. But she had bought some, two portions, and had offered him one.
The utter thoughtlessness of it had driven him into a rage.
“You know that I can’t stand the stuff!” From her expression he knew that he was shouting but he didn’t care. “What do you mean offering it to me?”
“Henry, please!” She had looked embarrassed, or so he had thought. People were staring at them and an usherette walked their way. He had thrust aside the ice cream, left his seat, stormed from the cinema. Susan, of course, had followed him and they had travelled home together without exchanging a word. The silence had lasted three days.
But had it been embarrassment—or fear?
He thought about the incident again, the newspaper shielding his face, his eyes blank as he stared into the past.
Embarrassment—or fear?
It was important, that question. A woman could be embarrassed by the shouted refusal of a gift. Add to that the fact that she was known, that people who were her friends watched the incident and you could arrive at a logical answer. But Susan knew that he detested ice cream. She should never have offered it to him.
Susan, the real Susan, would never have offered it to him.
So—had it been fear?
* * *
He lowered the newspaper and watched her as she sat there so patiently industrious with her knitting. Had she always been so industrious? She had been fond of knitting, agreed, but as fond as all that?
It was an item. He added it to other items.
The total made him feel inwardly sick.
There had been that time at the store. They had gone shopping together and there had been that young assistant. He had served her, cracking jokes and acting the fool and she had liked it. That was the incredible part—she had liked it. Watching them, noticing how their hands had touched, reading the secret messages in their eyes, he had known a sudden rush of anger.
Did she think him a fool?
Outside he had been unable to contain his rage. He had faced her with what she had done and, incredibly, she had defied him.
“What else do you expect me to do?” He had hated the expression on her face. “You don’t treat me as a human being. You don’t talk to me or take me out or anything.”
“That’s a lie!” The blatantness of it shocked him. “We’re out now, aren’t we? We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“I don’t mean like this.” Her eyes were swimming with tears. She rested her hand on his arm. “Can’t you see what you’re doing to me, Henry? It’s getting so that I’d talk to strangers just to have someone say a kind word to me. Laugh at their jokes just to see them smile.”
“You—!” He snatched his arm away. He saw her turn white at the word. He didn’t regret using it.
He seized her arm and shoved her roughly towards the car. “Now get home and stop acting like a common whore!”
She struck him then, slashing his face with her open hand before she ran to the bus stop. For a moment everything had turned misty, his rage was so intense that it affected his vision. He started after her; had he caught her he would have killed her. But he didn’t get the chance.
“Slow down, Henry.” Doctor Melhuish had him by the arm. “What’s the matter with you?”
He tried to speak, to explain, but an iron hand was around his throat and he couldn’t speak.
“Sit down.” The doctor was suddenly concerned. “Here, let me ease your collar,” He turned and smiled as he saw Susan coming towards them. She had seen what had happened.
“Is he—?”
“He’ll be all right.” Melhuish looked at Henry. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself,” he said, and he meant it. “Shouting after Susan like that. You’ve got a good wife there. A damn good wife.”
Then everything had dissolved in roaring and redness and his screamed denial was lost in the noise.
* * *
They said that he’d had a stroke, nothing serious but he had to take things easy. He took them easy for ten days before worry drove him back to the desk, to the books, to employees who couldn’t be trusted and bills that couldn’t be paid.
He worked twenty hours a day and was glad of it. Work numbed his brain, kept him from thinking, kept him from wondering just when it had all began. He had no doubts now, only a cold, bitter certainty. And yet he hid it. He was, he thought, clever and cunning and, by God, he could act too. But he was forewarned and watchful.
He would be fair, he decided. He would fall over backwards to be fair. It was possible, remotely possible, that he was wrong. He saw nothing wrong in his attitude, nothing that couldn’t be explained as being due to work and preoccupation and worry over the business but he would be fair. He would be normal, forget his worries, give Susan no chance to blame his attitude for her own.
But, all the time, he would watch. One day, inevitably, she would betray herself.
And betray herself she did.
* * *
He thought about it sitting behind his newspaper, staring at print with eyes that did not see the columns of type. How cunning she had been. How cleverly she had explained away the inexplicable. How smooth her words, how glib her rationlization. But she had wasted her time. She had gone too far. Now, as never before, he had no doubt.
He looked at her sitting beneath the lamp. It was night and, aside from the hum of passing cars, silent. They had a radio but it wasn’t on. They had a television but the screen remained blank. The stupid sounds and stupid pictures annoyed him with their banality and he could no longer tolerate them. So they sat, man and wife, she with her knitting and he with his newspaper. They would, sit until they went to bed, there to lie almost touching but worlds apart.
They would sleep, or pretend to, and then they would rise and he would go out to work and she would stay in the house and...
And do—what?
Once he had sneaked back after he had left and stared at her through a window. She had been sitting in that same chair, her hands in her lap, her eyes staring blankly before her. He had the impression that she had sat that way ever since he had left, that she would continue to sit there until he returned.
Was that the action of a normal woman?
And was it the action of a normal woman to put salt in the coffee?
She had done that only this morning. She had set out the cup and he had tasted it and then had spat the mouthful across the room.
“Salt!” He had screamed the accusation. She had cringed, her eyes huge in her face.
“No, Henry!”
“Don’t lie to me!” His throat was sore from shouting. “You tried to poison me you—!”
She hadn’t struck him, not this time. Instead she had picked up his cup and swallowed the coffee and had looked at him with what others would have called pity but which he knew to be triumph.
The bitch had destroyed the evidence!
Later Melhuish had dropped in at the office, ostensibly to exchange idle gossip. Henry had been cunning. He said nothing about the coffee, had even talked casually of Susan; had promised to drop in at the doctor’s for a medical. He had smiled and lied as he smiled and had felt pride that he could do so.
On the way out Melhuish paused.
“You know, Henry,” he said, “you’re a very sick man.”
“I’m fine.”
“You only think you are. That stroke threw you back quite a bit.” Melhuish hesitated. “The brain’s a funny thing, you know, Henry. Sometimes it gets its wires crossed. If that happens don’t let it throw you.”
Henry had promised that it wouldn’t. He had kept smiling instead of calling the man a fool but, behind that smile, he hid naked fear.
For now he knew what it was all about.
She was going to kill him.
She was going to take his life and take it because only then could she be really safe. The salt in the coffee had been a mistake—or had it? She couldn’t know everything and could have taken the salt for a poison. It was logical enough. Salt is composed of two poisons and she couldn’t know that, together, they are harmless.
A natural mistake?
An attempt at murder?
Who could follow the processes of an alien mind?
* * *
It was better now that it was out in the open.
Sitting behind the shield of his newspaper he didn’t have to hide the expression on his face, the loathing he felt whenever he looked at the woman who pretended to be his wife. If he only knew just when—but he didn’t know, he doubted if he would ever know.
Not that it mattered, not now. Susan, his Susan, was gone and this thing had taken her place. If she had been a better actor, had known a little more, had been more willing to learn—
He sighed, tormenting himself with thoughts of what-might-have-been. He had loved his wife—God how he had loved her. He had lived through an agony of tormenting doubt as he had watched her change, seen the subtle alteration from a happy, carefree woman into what now sat silently knitting in that chair.
The alien thing that had come to share his life.
The unknown creature that wanted to destroy him.
He was surprised that he felt so calm. His rages had passed, his storming angers, his insane, uncontrollable accusations. He had been foolish there, but he had done no real harm. He had never faced her with the truth, the real truth, and she had been quick with her denials and explanations.
And that, now he came to think of it, was the biggest betrayal of all.
For it hadn’t been his fault as she had hysterically claimed. His attitude towards her hadn’t altered. He had been worried, sure, but he was working for her, wasn’t he? What normal woman would blame a man for working hard to provide her with the things she wanted?
No normal woman, that was for sure.
And she had tried to kill him.
He thought that he could have borne everything but that. So it had stolen his wife, killed her perhaps, taken her body. So it had made mistakes and been thoughtless and, for all he knew, unfaithful. It had forgotten important things, and made him feel a fool and thrown him into rages. But did it have to kill him?
A bead of sweat fell to the paper in his hands. It made a damp patch, which widened as he watched it. The silence of the night grew oppressive, the sense of waiting, of mounting tension, of anticipation. How long could a man continue waiting to be killed? How long did he have to sit and wait and all the time knowing that the thing which had taken over his wife was hating him and watching him and wanting to get rid of him so that it could carry on without fear of discovery?
He rose and went out into the kitchen. ‘It’ looked at him as he passed but he didn’t say anything; he had nothing to say. He took a drink of water, not because he wanted it but so as to satisfy its curiosity as to what he was doing.
He found what he wanted almost at once.
Back in the room he stood behind its chair. He simply stood and waited and he was quite calm, quite relaxed; quite certain as to what he had to do. He watched the needles falter, their movement cease. He saw the face look at him, the eyes wide and peculiar. He even found it possible to smile.
“Henry!” The name rose to a scream. “Henry!”
He raised his arm, lifting it high before swinging it and what he held down hard against the face with the terrified eyes.
The cleaver was very sharp.
SELL ME A DREAM
Often I think that market places are the most romantic spots in the world. Not your glistening palaces with their serried shelves and all their wares rank
ed in solid array; they have merely stolen the name to give them a grace they do not have, They are cold places, sterile with their boxes and bags all wrapped and sealed and carefully devoid of all interesting odours. They are soulless in their mechanical efficiency and immoral in the way they shamelessly cheat with their large, economy sized packages that contain two parts of produce to one part of air. They are mere vending machines, nothing more, and I will have none of them.
But the market places, the real market places, how wonderful they are! London is well supplied with them as is every large city and, forty years ago, there were more than there are now. Those were the days when naphtha flares beat back the night, casting a flickering, ruddy glow over the stalls loaded with fruit from foreign shores. Oranges and lemons, pomegranates and bananas, chestnuts in the winter together with great slabs of sticky dates, pressed, dried figs and muscatels, almonds and sweet walnuts. In the summer soft fruits from Kent and crisp lettuce, cucumbers, radishes and tender spring onions.
Those stalls have changed now. Together with the old staples other, even more exotic fruits have shouldered for themselves a place in the cramped display. Aubergines and peppers, uglis and lychees, fresh figs and the once luxurious mushroom, all have come to enchant the eye and tease the palate. But one thing has not changed.
In every market place you will find them. The stalls and corners heaped with apparent rubbish, the junk displays; the relics of a bygone age, once treasured and now tossed aside to this, their last resting place before final destruction. They fascinated me then as they fascinate me now, those stalls. Not so much for what they offer for sale as the questions and stories those articles hold. I used to spend hours wandering up and down, pausing by some interesting specimen, holding it in my hand, wondering at its past history, its past use, the care which went into its fabrication and the pleasure and pride it must once have given.
