Hangover Square (11 page)

‘No,’ she said, still looking out of the window. ‘You’re not at the moment – if you want the truth.’

‘What do you mean, Netta? What am I doing?’

‘You’re being a bloody, insufferable bore. And the more you go on the more boring you’re being. So won’t you shut up? I’m likely to be much more civil, as you put it, if you do.’

There was another pause.

‘All right, Netta, I’ll shut up,’ he said, and he was silent.

Well, that was that. The evening was over. He knew the rules. When she delivered the final snub, it was always recognizable as such, and it was no use going on.

He hadn’t really expected anything else. He had known no good could ever come from taking her out. He supposed he had somehow hoped, in the back of his mind, to make love to her, to woo her, to have her for a few hours to himself and try to bring about a change in her heart towards him. But he ought to have known better than to have hoped for such a thing, even in the back of his mind.

He had known that making love to her was tacitly but utterly forbidden – that he only remained tolerable to her so long as he remained silent about the passion which raged in him. He at any rate couldn’t accuse her of not making herself clear on that point. This wasn’t the first time he had taken her out and been told he was a bloody insufferable bore – though perhaps she had not before been quite so painfully direct in her speech.

What now? Hadn’t he better give her up? Hadn’t he better make up his mind to give her up altogether? Hadn’t he better go from pub to pub, getting really drunk, and picking up a woman and going with her and deciding all the time to give Netta up? He had done that once or twice before. It hadn’t succeeded yet, as far as giving Netta up was concerned, but hadn’t he better try again? It might work this time, and he might as well complete the usual circle. And anyway it would be nice to get drunk and go with a woman. He had got five pounds left.

Yes – that was the idea. Then why not start now – leave her in the taxi – let her get home by herself? That was it. Leave her now. It would give her a bird, to leave her stone cold for once. He would do it ever so politely. That would make it more of a bird. He would even offer to pay for the taxi.

‘Look here, Netta,’ he said, ‘do you mind if I get out here? I think I’d like to stay in the West End for a bit.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘not at all.’

But he did not exactly hear her say this. Rather he saw her lips saying it. For before she spoke and while he was looking at her, there was a funny sound, like a click of a camera shutter in the middle of his head, and the world was not the same lively, audible, intelligible world which it had been a fraction of a second before.

Chapter Six

Click!
…

Here it was again! He was in London, in a taxi at night, and it had happened again!…

‘Click…’ That was the only way to describe it. It was like the click of a camera shutter. Shutter! That was the word. A shutter had come down over his brain: he had shut down: he was shut out from the world he had been in a moment before.

The world he was in now was the same in shape, the same to look at, but ‘dead’, silent, mysterious, as though its scenes and activities were all taking place in the tank of an aquarium or even at the bottom of the ocean – a noiseless, intense, gliding, fishy world.

It was as though he had suddenly gone deaf – mentally deaf. It was as though one had blown one’s nose too hard, and the outer world had become dim and dead. It was as though one had gone into a sound-proof telephone booth and shut the door tightly on oneself.

There were a hundred and one ways of describing it. When it happened to him he always tried to describe it to himself – to analyse it – because it was such a funny feeling. He was not frightened by it, because he was used to it by now. But it was happening a good deal too often nowadays, and he wished it wouldn’t.

It was such a weird feeling: it was always novel, and, in a way, interesting to him. It was as though the people around him, although they moved about, were not really alive: as though their existence had no motive or meaning, as though they were shadows – rabbits or butterflies or kangaroos – thrown on the wall by an amateur conjurer with a candle. And although they talked, and although he could understand what they said, it was not as though they had spoken in the ordinary way, and it was an effort to understand and to answer.

Take Netta, for instance, who was rather oddly and inexplicably sitting beside him in this taxi. He knew it was Netta
well enough – but it was a different Netta. Although he could see her she was remote, almost impalpable, miles away – like a voice over the telephone, or the mental construction of the owner of a voice one might make while phoning – a ghost, if you liked.

She was saying something actually. She was saying ‘Well aren’t you getting out?’

He could hear and understand the words, but for the moment he couldn’t gather what they meant. They seemed divorced from any context: or at any rate he didn’t know what the context was. So he didn’t answer. For the moment anyway, he was too interested in what had happened in his head.

Then, gradually, and as usual, and without his being aware of it, the feeling of novelty and strangeness, his conscious knowledge of the transition, of the falling of the shutter, faded away. And the world he was in now, the world under the sea, was his proper world, the only one he knew.

And in this world there was something to be done. There was something to be done which he had forgotten about. He had, he fancied, somewhat reprehensibly forgotten about it, and now he must remember it. He could never think of it all at once, but it would come. If he didn’t nag at it, but took things easily, it would come.

The taxi sped on towards Kensington; the reflected lights whirled across the inside of the taxi: he looked at the taxi-man’s black bumping back, and he remained silent and waited for it to come. But now she was speaking to him again.

‘I am sorry,’ she was saying, ‘but didn’t I understand you to say you were getting out?’

What did this mean? ‘Getting out?’ Getting out of what? The taxi? Or of some business or concern in which he was a partner with her? What was she talking about? It was a nuisance, her speaking to him like this. How could he remember what he had to remember, if she interrupted him all the time?

‘I don’t know,’ he said.

He couldn’t say anything else, because he didn’t know what she was talking about. He hoped it would shut her up. He looked at the taxi-man’s back and tried to get back into a proper state of mind to remember…

But she evidently was not going to leave him alone. ‘Oh Christ,’ he heard her saying, ‘you’re not going to throw one of your dumb moods now, are you?’

Dumb moods? What dumb moods? She spoke as though he had been dumb, or sulky, in the past. When? That evening? She was talking gibberish as far as he was concerned.

He looked at her, and saw that she was looking at him with a sort of angry curiosity, as if demanding an answer. He was annoyed by these interruptions – the fact that she wouldn’t let him alone – but he felt he ought to be polite.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and smiled at her. He was aware that his smile was rather foolish, but he hoped that by smiling at her, and being polite, he might make her leave him alone.

It seemed to do the trick. She looked at him, somewhat intently, and then she turned her head and looked out of the window again. Now he could get back to remembering.

He wondered what he was doing in this taxi with Netta. Had they been to a party? Was it the end of some awful binge? They were evidently going home. He looked at his watch and saw that it was only a quarter to ten. What a funny time. But all that didn’t matter. All he had to do was to remember and, if he took it easily, and if she didn’t interrupt him again, he would be able to do so.

Lulled by the rhythm of the jolting cab, by the whirling reflected lights inside, by the taxi-man’s black bumping back, by the smooth, slick change-cycle (red, red-and-amber, green, amber, red) of the traffic lights, it seemed that he almost slept, that he was in a dream, barely conscious of anything. Then, just after they had passed the Albert Hall, he remembered without any difficulty what he had to do; he had to kill Netta Longdon. He was going to kill her, and then he was going to Maidenhead. At the moment he was not quite clear as to who Netta Longdon was, but that would come back, too…

He ought to have remembered before. He couldn’t think why he had forgotten. He was always forgetting this. It went out of his head for hours on end, for days. So far as he knew he hadn’t thought about it since he was at Hunstanton. He kept on putting
it off and kept on forgetting about it. He drank such a lot he was going a bit dotty, probably.

No – he was doing himself an injustice. He kept on putting it off because these things had to be planned. He had decided that at Hunstanton. Fantastically, incredibly, absurdly easy as it all was, it still had to be planned. He wasn’t going to have any meddling from the police. The thing had got to be done properly. Not that the police could touch him when once he had got to Maidenhead. But they were clever, and might start meddling before he got there. He was one too clever for them.

Then when was he going to do it? What had he decided the last time he thought about it – on the cliff at Hunstanton? Oh yes – he remembered now. He had decided then to wait until the spring – until it was warmer. It had seemed then that he couldn’t kill Netta Longdon while it was so cold. That seemed reasonable enough…

He heard a voice, a woman’s voice in his ear.

‘Have you got a cigarette, please?’ it said. ‘I seem to have run out’

He turned his head and saw Netta beside him. She was rummaging in her bag. She had asked him for a cigarette.

Netta… There was something familiar about her…

She was
like
somebody… Who was it? She was the
image
of somebody… Good God – he saw it all! She was like
Netta Longdon
. She
was
Netta Longdon! This actually was the Netta Longdon he was going to kill before he went to Maidenhead. She was sitting in a taxi with him now. How had that come about? She was sitting beside him as though she was waiting to be killed – had come along with him specially for it. What a delicious coincidence!

She was looking at him truculently now.

‘Well, don’t sit there gaping at me,’ he heard her saying. Tor God’s sake have you
got
a cigarette, or have you
not

‘No,’ he said, limply, apologetically, ‘I’m afraid I haven’t.’

Chapter Seven

He couldn’t be bothered to say anything eke, to feel in his pockets to find out whether he had or not. He was too interested in, delighted by the coincidence of her being in the taxi with him at this moment, sitting and collaborating in being killed…

Surely he must take advantage of this coincidence – surely he must kill her tonight. Fate had arranged it – had it not?

She was speaking again now.

‘Well do you mind getting the man to stop at a machine,’ she was saying, ‘I certainly want some.’

He didn’t understand this. What man? What machine? Was a man working at a machine somewhere?

‘What did you say?’ he said, hoping he would understand better if she repeated it.

‘I said,’ she said, still looking at him truculently, ‘will you stop the man at a cigarette machine. Have you gone stone deaf as well as everything else?’

It was funny, the way she was so aggressive, and shouted at him, when she was really there with him just to be killed. You would have thought she didn’t know she was going to be killed. Don’t be a fool though – of course she didn’t know. He was slipping up. The whole point was that she didn’t. She must never know. That was what made the whole thing so clever – the fact that it was so absurdly, incredibly easy, and the fact that she knew nothing about it. He had got to act, pretend – so that she never guessed. He had got to throw himself into a part. He remembered now.

Because, in his preoccupation, he did not answer her, she gave him another angry look, and, rising, spoke to the taxi-man through the window. He heard her tell him to stop at a cigarette machine. He understood what she meant now. When the taxi stopped, he said ‘All right’ and got out himself.

As he fished in his pocket for a shilling in front of the machine he saw even more clearly that this was where he had got to put on an act. He was glad of the fresh air for the moment, so
that he could collect himself. If he was going to kill her, and surely it looked as though fate had made it clear that he should kill her tonight, then he had got to put on an act like mad. He had got to try to understand what she said, to pretend he was in her world, to make her believe that everything was proceeding normally, that he was not preoccupied with the thought of killing her and the means he was going to employ. Well, he could act all right! – that was just where his cleverness lay – he hadn’t got any doubts on that score. ‘Here you are,’ he said, throwing the cigarettes on her lap, and he closed the taxi door, and it started again. ‘Can I have one after you?’

That was clever itself – the way he said that. Normal, indifferent, casual – just the right note. Now he must give her a light – another beautifully normal thing to do. As he felt in his pocket for the matches he brought out a box of cigarettes along with them.

‘Oh, do look,’ he said, ‘I had some after all. What a fool…’

Clever again! He hadn’t pretended he hadn’t got them – he had himself pointed to the fact. You couldn’t beat him if it came to acting. He lit her cigarette, and then his own. He looked out of the window and saw they were nearing their destination.

‘Do you mind if I come up with you for a moment,’ he said, ‘and have another gin?’

‘No,’ she said, after a pause. ‘You can come up and have a last one – if you’ll try and behave sensibly.’

‘Oh, I’ll behave sensibly…’

The taxi drew up at her door. He got out first and helped her out. Gallantry itself. He overtipped the taxi-man and talked about the weather to him.