31st Of February (17 page)

The comedy was wiped away from Fletchley’s face. The corners of his mouth turned down in an expression of stage misery. “Gone.”

“What do you mean? Gone home?”

“Oh no, she’s not gone home. She’ll never go home again, Andy boy, she’ll never go home again.”

“She’s left you, then?” Anderson asked brutally. He now had Fletchley not only in focus but in colour, the bluish bags under the eyes, the pasty white cheeks, a hint of carbuncle on the nose.

“She says she’s left me, but she’ll never leave me. That’s one thing Elaine could never do to her old Fletch. She always comes back. She’s been here tonight. Now she’s gone again, but she’ll come back.”

“Then where is she?”

“At this moment, old boy, she’s probably careering round Regent’s Park in a taxi, making love to a young man. Film star – not a star, that is, but film actor. Good looking. Young. Got everything. She deserves everything; she deserves the best, and what’s she got? Me?” Tears were in Fletchley’s eyes. “But I want you to know, Andy, that I’m not jealous. Whatever I may have said or done, it wasn’t done in jealousy.” The great drops of liquid overspilled the lids, surmounted the bags beneath them, and coursed down Fletchley’s cheeks. He put out his tongue and licked at them.

The realization of Fletchley’s condition made Anderson feel fully sober, although he was not in any case suffering from drunkenness in any easily recognizable form. His speech was clear, his mind normally, perhaps even abnormally, active; the room and the people in it had now settled into what was almost a state of slow motion. He could observe in detail every movement of a hand, every flicker of expression. His perceptions seemed to be sharpened so that, for instance, the colours of Fletchley’s suit, a close-woven herringbone, stood out with extraordinary distinctness. He put out a hand and touched the cloth, and a remarkable improvement in his tactile sense was also apparent; his fingers rubbed against material not to be classified simply as rough or smooth but identifiable, rather, in terms of emotion. This, Anderson seemed to realize, was the way in which life itself should ideally be apprehended. What stirs in my stomach at the touch of this cloth? What subliminal urges move me when I feel fur? What words can taste buds find in richness of cream?
Softness,
indeed, and
richness –
how inadequate they were.

“Words,” he said to Fletchley, “are not feelings.”

“What’s that, old boy? I didn’t quite catch.”

“Richness, softness, what do they express? What do any words? Not feelings. Words were deceivers ever. The true feelings lie here.” Anderson placed his hand on the top button of his waistcoat.

“Deceivers ever.” Fletchley’s great head swung pendulously from side to side and two more tears rolled smoothly over the blubber of his cheeks. “Who could ’a thought that a girl like Elaine would go off – go off night after night. A well-set-up girl like Elaine. Who could ’a thought it.”

“Take advertisement, a virdual syntagma.”

“But I want you to know, Andy, that nothing said or done was in jealousy. You believe me, old boy, don’t you?”

Fletchley was obviously much moved. Anderson said: “I believe you.”

“A well-set-up girl. Say what you like, at
Woman Beautiful
they’re all well-set-up girls. Like Val. Your little woman was a well-set-up girl and where did it get her?” Fletchley began to sob, loudly and miserably. “She died. Your little woman died a miserable, a sudden death.”

The words dropped, dropped, how did they drop – like bombs, like vitriol? – into the pool of Anderson’s peace. He felt anger and yet the peace, his sense of the profound unimportance of what Fletchley was saying, underlay the anger which (like, perhaps, a thick coating of oil?) rested on the surface and made his own voice say sharply: “A sudden death – what do you mean a sudden death?”

“Sudden and sad. I wrote today, old boy, one of my little pieces. “She will not see the spring, nor hear the bluetit sing, nor see the lambkins gambol in the meadow. I thought of Val.”

“Sudden death. You mean —”
as Anderson spoke the words their relation to football matches and music hall jokes –
“you mean foul play.”

“My dear old boy.” Fletchley’s tears stopped.

“That’s what you mean, is it?
Foul play.”

“Don’t get me wrong, Andy.”

“If not foul play, why sudden death? Out with it, Fletchley.”
The peace still existed deep down, very deep down, but the surface anger was fairly boiling away, there could be no doubt of that.

Half turning away, rubbing fat tear-stained cheeks, his whole sagging body shivering with distain, Fletchley muttered words well in the tradition of
foul play:
“If the cap fits—”

From the depth of his inner peace, remote in a fastness impenetrable by anger and unsusceptible to words, Anderson saw and felt what happened next: the endlessly deliberate action with which his right arm moved, forward and upward (would it never reach?), until it collided violently with an obstacle. Violently, violently; and yet in that happy seclusion where his spirit rested imperturbable, Anderson was almost unaware of the impact of fist on flesh, experienced only as one feels the disturbance of a hair that has strayed across the face. He saw, however, the colour of a fist, strong, brownish, hairy, against unhealthy white; he saw the badly articulated body move slowly backward and sink to ground; he saw the pin of blood, that gathered to a large ruby, and was then comically a river of red tears, But the wbole thing became at last a fag, too much trouble to follow: quite deliberately he withdrew his eyes from the body wriggling on the floor, his ears from the orchestra about to spray over him prompted by the fistic overture; deliberately he withdrew from it all and settled in that landscape of the heart which he had always known to exist, but had never before been lucky enough to find.

8

He was walking down a long narrow road which seemed to have no ending. Tall houses upon either side turned upon him their unfriendly night faces, Nobody but himself seemed to be moving, so that it must be late perhaps very late. Where had he been and what had he been doing? He found himself wishing for a door to open and show behind it a rich panel of light from within, for the scream of a radio set, for some footsteps other than his own to tap the pavement. There was something disturbing in this apparently purposeful but actually aimless movement of leg after leg. He could not be quite sure that he was awake.

A hand placed, quite casually, upon his forehead, came away wet. Was it with blood? But beneath a street lamp’s yellow light he saw that a fine straight rain was falling. His forehead, of course, was wet with it. But he was conscious that for some reason or another his forehead should not be wet. Why not? And then the same hand passed over his hair revealed that he was not wearing a hat. He must have left it at the party.

At the end of the endless road he turned left into a road apparently identical with it. The circles of faint light round the street lamps; the high, blind houses; the absence of people or noise. But there was something else wrong, some strange stiffness affected him. His movements, he discovered, were like those of one struggling against an impediment. Could he, in some way, have been injured? He began gingerly to prod ribs, side and shoulders. Then he realized the cause of the trouble and began to laugh. He was wearing the wrong coat.

Anderson could not have said why the discovery that he was wearing an overcoat much too small for him should have amused him so much. Crowing and hooting with laughter, he capered down the road, and in a moment heard the distant hooting of a motor horn. The sound gave him much pleasure. He passed a shuttered and silent public house, It was, then, after eleven o’clock – but, of course, he knew that, for he could not have reached the Pollexfen party before ten. And as he remembered the Pollexfen party his mind moved back to the strange triangle at VV’s flat and he laughed again, laughed until he felt he must burst the buttons of his borrowed overcoat, and at further thought of the overcoat stood, quite helpless with laughter, propped against a sign outside the pub. He turned his face upward to the sky to catch the rain and as he did so distinguished in the faint light the outline of a figure with cloven hoofs and harlequin’s clothes. Above the figure was the word Demon. It was strange, he thought, that there should be two demons in London with exactly the same sign. Then his laughter was stopped as tape is cut by scissors. There were not two Demons. This was the
Demon
he knew, the pub at the corner of Joseph Street.

It is again impossible to explain rationally why the discovery that his legs had guided him home should have cancelled Anderson’s uproarious mirth, but it is a fact that he was remarkably reluctant to turn the corner into Joseph Street and enter his flat
.
He felt that some disastrous news awaited him there; and it was only by a great effort of will that he pushed away from the signpost that had supported his uncontrollable laughter and turned into Joseph Street. Then he stood still. Joseph Street, like the other streets through which he had walked, was dark and silent. But not altogether dark. Through the windows of his own flat, inadequately contained by the gappy curtains, two fingers of light stuck out into the road.

Anderson’s next actions, the thirty steps taken to his own front door, the key inserted in lock, entrance hall crossed, and the last decisive action of turning the Yale key to open the door of his own flat, were as difficult as any he had performed in his life. When they were done he felt relief, although he had no idea of what lay behind the closed door of the sitting room. He smelled cigar smoke, which somehow reassured him; and, opening the door, he saw Inspector Cresse filling one of the chromium-armed chairs, hands folded on stomach, staring placidly ahead of him like a musical comedy Buddha. Cigar smoke was thick in the room, a cigar was in the Inspector’s mouth, and the stubs of two more lay in an ashtray. Slowly, and it seemed in several movements, the Inspector rose from the chair. The two men stood looking at each other and then the Inspector, a courteous host, waved a hand. “Come in, come in, and make yourself at home. There’s been a little trouble.”

“Trouble?” And now Anderson, looking round the room, saw that a great wind might have blown through it. The carpet had been pulled up and then thrown aside, a pouffe had been slit open, seats of some chairs had been removed. The pictures, stacked against the wall, had their backs cut away. The Inspector followed Anderson’s roving gaze with heavy interest. “And the tubular lamps,” he said, “and the fire elements. Unscrewed them to see what they could find. Thorough.” He nodded amiably toward the bedroom door. “In there, too. Chaos, I’m afraid. Mattress and pillows, all that kind of thing. Even took the back out of that portrait of your wife. I don’t call that playing the game.”

And the writing desk? Anderson had carefully refrained from looking at it; but that, he realized, might be in itself suspicious. He looked, and the Inspector’s eyes, at the moment singularly mild, followed. The writing desk was open. Bills, letters, papers, lay confused within it. The drawer beneath had been opened also. Had the searcher discovered the hidden panel, and the limp black book?

“Quite a neat job,” the Inspector said. “Didn’t force the lock there. Used a skeleton key.” Anderson stared and stared, in bewilderment. Presumably the person responsible for this raid was Val’s lover? But what could have been his purpose? To get some more letters, perhaps, which he knew Val had left here? But that seemed ridiculous.

“You’re looking a bit under the weather,” the Inspector said. “Let me pour you a drink, and perhaps you won’t take it as a liberty if I pour myself one, too. I haven’t done so, because I never take drink or bite in another man’s home without invitation.” He stopped in the act of pouring whisky.

“Is that really your coat? It seems to be a very bad fit.”

Anderson struggled out of the overcoat, and threw it on a chair. “I picked it up by mistake at a party.”

“Gadding about.” A large finger wagged at Anderson. Behind it the white face with its two deep furrows was placid. “Do you know it’s one o’clock? I’ve been here two hours. But you guessed that, I daresay, by the stubs. They’re Upman cigars – take nearly an hour to smoke – two and a half gone. I ought to charge them up to you.”

“Why are you waiting for me? What are you doing here?”

“The ingratitude of mankind.” Now, for the moment an absolutely farcical figure, the Inspector ran a hand over his shining bald head. “Usually we policemen are slated for inefficiency. Try to be efficient, try to help people a little, and are they pleased? They certainly aren’t. But let me tell you about it.” He produced a notebook from an inner pocket and referred to it. “At 8.48 this evening PC Johnson observed that the front door of Number 10 Joseph Street stood wide open. He rang the bell and, receiving no reply from upper or lower floor, entered the hall. The door to the upper flat was closed, but he found the door to the lower flat standing open. He entered and found–” the Inspector stopped reading “this.”

“That tells me nothing.” Anderson stared now unashamedly at the open lower drawer of the writing desk. “It doesn’t tell me why
you’re
here.”

“I take an interest in you.” The Inspector’s hands were clasped against his stomach.

“You pursue me.”

“Oh now – really.” The furrows deepened, the mouth curved in deprecation.

“What about this afternoon? A message left for me in the office given to a girl who might make anything of it. ‘The air is unhealthy in Melian Street.’ That sort of thing is disgraceful, I say, disgraceful. It is persecution.” Anderson had not meant to shout, but the sight of this large man sitting in his wrecked room, drinking whisky, somehow induced anger with this policeman and all his kind.

“Now now, Mr Anderson, I’m really surprised at you. Persecution, indeed. I was trying to be helpful.”

“Helpful!”