A Demon in My View (6 page)

Three more beers had also arrived. Jonathan, having directed several more insulting but this time ineffectual remarks at Vesta
—remarks which seemed to gratify rather than annoy her husband—began to talk of Li-li Chan. What a “dish” she was. How he could understand those Empire builders who had deserted their pallid, dehydrated wives for oriental mistresses. Like little flowers they were. He hoped Anthony appreciated his luck in sharing a bathroom with Li-li. And so on. Anthony decided he had had enough of it for the time being. Years of living in hall and rooming houses and hostels had taught him the folly of making friends for the sake of making friends. Sooner or later the one or two you really want for your friends will turn up, and then you have the problem of ridding yourself of these stopgaps.

So when Brian began making plans for the evening, a mammoth pub crawl, he declined firmly. To his surprise, Jonathan also declined, he had some mysterious engagement, and Vesta too, suddenly becoming less zombie-like, said she was going out. Brian needn’t start asking why or who with and all that. She was free, wasn’t she? She hadn’t got married to be harassed all the time and in public.

Anthony felt a little sorry for Brian, whose spaniel face easily became forlorn. “Some other time,” he said, and he meant it.

The sun was shining and the whole afternoon lay ahead of him. Radclyffe Park, he thought, and when the K.12 bus came along he got on it. The park was large and hardly any of it was formally laid out. In a green space where the grass was dappled with the shadows of plane leaves, he sat down and reread Helen’s letter.

   
Darling Tony, I knew I’d miss you but I didn’t know how bad it would be. I feel like asking, whose idea was this? But I know we both came to it simultaneously and it’s the only way. Besides, neither of us is the sort of person who can be happy in a clandestine thing, an intrigue. Being discreet seems pointless to you, doesn’t it, a squalid bore, and as for me, I always hated lying to Roger. When you said—or was it I who said it?—that it must be all or nothing, I, you, we, were right
.

But I can’t be very good at lying because I know Roger has sensed my defection. He has always been causelessly jealous but he never actually did things about it. Now he’s started phoning me at work two or three times a day and last week he opened
two letters that came for me. One of them was from mother and the other was an invitation to a dress show, but I couldn’t get all upstage and affronted virtue with him. How could I? After all, I do have a lover, I have deceived him…
.

   A child, playing some distance off, gave his ball a massive kick so that it landed at Anthony’s feet. He bowled it back. Funny, how people thought it was only women who wanted to marry and have children of their own.

   
I remember all the things you taught me, principles on which to conduct one’s life. Applied Existentialism. I tell myself I am not responsible for any other adult person and that I am not in this world to live up to Roger’s expectations. But I married him, Tony. Didn’t I, in marrying him, go a long way towards promising to be responsible for his happiness? Didn’t I more or less say that he had a right to expect much from me? And he has had so little, poor Roger. I never even pretended to love him. I haven’t slept with him for six months. I only married him because he pressed me and pressed me and wouldn’t take my no…
.

   Anthony frowned when he came to that bit. He hated her weakness, her vacillations. There were whole areas of her soft, sensitive personality he didn’t begin to understand. But here was the Bunyan passage—that made sense.

So why don’t I just tell him and walk out?—Leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell … Fear, I suppose, and compassion
. But sense that was too short-lived.
It’s because at the moment compassion is stronger than passion that I’m here and you’re alone in London
.… He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. He wasn’t downcast, only rather lonely, more than rather bored. In the end she would come to him, her own feelings for him were too strong to be denied. There had been things between them she would remember in his absence, and that memory, that hope of renewal, would be stronger than any pity. In the meantime? He threw back the child’s ball once more, rolled over on his side on the warm dry grass and slept.

The tube took Anthony one stop back to Kenbourne Lane. At the station entrance a boy of about ten came up to him and asked him for a penny for the guy.

“In
September?
A bit premature, aren’t you?”

“Got to make an early start, mister,” said the boy, “or someone else’ll get my patch.”

Anthony laughed and gave him tenpence. “I don’t see any guy.”

“That’s what me and my friend are collecting for. To get one.”

The children, those in the park, and the two at the station, gave him an idea. A job for the evenings and the occasional weekend afternoon, a job for which he was admirably and thoroughly trained … It was six o’clock. He let himself into Room 2, wrote his letter, addressed an envelope and affixed a stamp to it. The whole operation took no more than ten minutes, but by the time it was done the room was so dark that he had to put the jellyfish light on. Emerging, he encountered Arthur Johnson in the hall, and Arthur Johnson was also holding a letter in his hand. Anthony would have passed him with no more than a smile and a “good evening,” but the “other” Johnson—or was that he?—turned, almost barring his passage, and fixed him with an intense, anxious, and almost hungry look.

“May I enquire if you are going out for the evening, Mr. Johnson, or merely to the post?”

“Just to the post,” Anthony said, surprised.

The hopeful light in the other man’s eyes seemed to die. And yet why should he care one way or the other? Perhaps, on the other hand, that was the answer he had wanted, for now he held out his hand, smiling with a kind of forced bonhomie, and said ingratiatingly:

“Then, since I am going there myself, let me have the pleasure of taking your letter.”

“Thanks,” Anthony said. “That’s nice of you.”

Arthur Johnson took the letter and, without another word, left the house, closing the front door silently and with painstaking care behind him.

The dustmen’s strike had ended, Arthur read in his paper, on the last Monday of September. Two days later, on the first Wednesday of October, he heard the crashing of lids, the creak of machinery, and the (to his way of thinking) lunatic ripostes of the men, that told him Trinity Road was at last being cleared of refuse. He might have saved himself the trouble of writing to the local authority. Still, such complaints kept them on their toes; they had replied promptly enough. The brown envelope was marked: London Borough of Kenbourne and addressed to A. Johnson Esq., 2/142 Trinity Road, London W15 6HD. Arthur put it in his pocket. The rest of the post, a shoe shop advertising circular for Li-li Chan and a mauve-grey envelope, postmarked Bristol, for Anthony Johnson, he arranged in their appropriate positions on the hall table.

They were all out but for himself. From the phone call he had overheard, Arthur knew Anthony Johnson would be going off to college or whatever it was today, but he was relieved to have had assurance made doubly sure by the sight of the “other” Johnson, viewed from his living room window, departing at five past nine for the tube station. Not that it was of much practical assistance to him, as he too must go to work in ten minutes; it was simply comforting to know the man went out sometimes. It was a beginning.

He went back upstairs and slit the letter open with one of Auntie Gracie’s silver fruit knives.
London Borough of Kenbourne. Department of Social Services
. Well, he’d have expected to hear from the sanitary inspector but you never could tell these
days.
Dear Sir, in reply to your letter of the 28th inst., requesting information as to the availability of work in children’s play centres within the Borough, we have to inform you that such centres would come under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority and are not our …

Arthur realised what had happened and he was appalled. That he—he out of the two of them—should be the one to open a letter in error! It would have mattered so much less if it had been someone else’s letter, that giggly little Chinese piece, for instance, or that drunk, Dean. Obviously the letter must be returned. Arthur was so shaken by what he had done that he couldn’t bring himself to write the necessary note of apology on the spot. Besides, it would make him late for work. It was nearly a quarter past nine. He put the envelope and its contents into his empty briefcase and set off.

The demolition men were at work and Auntie Gracie’s living room—brown lincrusta, marble fireplace, pink linoleum—all exposed to the public view. There on the ochre-coloured wallpaper was the paler rectangle marking where the sideboard had stood, the sideboard into whose drawer he had shut the mouse. His first killing. Auntie Gracie had died in that room, and from it he had gone out to make death … Why think of all that now? He felt sick. He unlocked the gates and let himself into his office, wishing there was some way of insulating the place from the sounds of hammer blows and falling masonry, but by the time Barry lounged in at a quarter to ten, he was already composing the first draft of a note to Anthony Johnson.

Fortunately, there was very little correspondence for Grainger’s that day, the books were in apple-pie order and well up to date. Arthur found the task before him exacting, and one draft after another went into the wastepaper basket. But by one o’clock the letter—handwritten, as typewritten notes were discourteous—was as perfect a specimen of its kind as he could achieve.

   
Dear Mr. Johnson, please accept my heartfelt apologies for having opened your letter in error. Considering the gravity of this intrusion into your private affairs, I think it only proper to give you a full explanation. I was myself expecting a letter from
the council of the London Borough of Kenbourne in reply to one of my own requesting action to be taken with regard to the disgraceful situation concerning the cessation of a regular refuse collection. Reading the Borough’s name on the envelope, I opened it without more ado only to find that the communication was intended for your good self. Needless to say, I did not read more than was strictly necessary to inform me that I was not the proper recipient. In hopes that you will be kind enough to overlook what was, in fact, a genuine mistake, I am, Yours sincerely, Arthur Johnson
.

   Who could tell what time Anthony Johnson would return? Arthur let himself into 142 at one-fifteen. The house was silent, empty, and the mauve-grey envelope was still on the hall table. Beside it, neatly aligned to it, Arthur placed the Kenbourne council letter and his own note, the two fastened together with a paper clip. When he returned from work just before five-thirty all the letters were still there and the house was still empty.

Alone in his flat, he began to speculate as to Anthony Johnson’s reaction. Perhaps the whole incident would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Anthony Johnson would read his note, be moved by its earnest rectitude, and come immediately upstairs to tell Arthur he quite understood and not to give it another thought. This would be his chance. He put the kettle on, set a tray with the best china, and left his front door on the latch so that Anthony Johnson would know he was expected and welcome. For, irksome as it was to entertain someone and make conversation, it was now of paramount importance. And how wonderful if, in the course of that conversation, Anthony Johnson should announce his intention of securing an evening job—as the letter had intimated he might.

He sat by the window, looking down. Li-li Chan was the first to get home. She arrived with a different young man in a green sports car, and ten minutes after they got into the house Arthur heard her on the phone.

“No, no, I tell you I very sorry.” Li-li almost, but not quite, said “velly.” “You give theatre ticket some other nice girl. I wash my hair, stay in all night. Oh, but you are so silly. I don’t love
you because I wash my hair? I say I do love you, I love lots, lots of people, so good-bye now!”

Arthur craned his neck to see her and her escort leap into the car and roar off in the direction of Kenbourne Lane. He waited. Vesta Kotowsky came in alone, looking sulky. There was one, Arthur thought, who could do with an evening at home to get that draggled, greasy hair washed. At five past six Anthony Johnson emerged from under the arched entrance to Oriel Mews. And as Arthur watched him approach, the tall well-proportioned figure, the firm-featured, handsome face, the mane of hair crowning a shapely head, he felt a stirring of something that was part envy, part resentment. Yet this wasn’t evoked by the “other” Johnson’s good looks—hadn’t he, Arthur, had just as great a share of those himself?—or by his occupancy of Room 2. Rather it was that there, in the process of its mysterious unfair workings, fate had been kinder. Fate hadn’t saddled this man with a propensity that placed his life and liberty at constant risk.…

The front door of the house closed with a thud midway between Arthur’s pernickety click and Jonathan Dean’s ceiling-splitting crash. Ten minutes went by, a quarter of an hour, half an hour. Arthur was on tenterhooks. It was getting almost too late for tea. Time he started cooking his meal. The idea of anyone even tapping at the door, let alone coming in, while he was eating was unthinkable. Should he go down himself? Perhaps. Perhaps he should reinforce his note with a personal appearance and a personal apology.

A car door slammed. He rushed back to the window. It was the Kotowsky car, and Brian Kotowsky and Jonathan Dean got out of it. There followed a resounding crash of the front door. A long pause of silence and then a single set of footsteps mounted the stairs. Could it be at last … But, no. Dean’s room door banged beneath him.

Very uneasy now, Arthur stood at the window. And again Brian Kotowsky appeared. Arthur caught his breath in sharply as he saw Anthony Johnson also emerge from the house. He looked reluctant, even irritable.