I Shall Not Want (6 page)

“Your hair, Mr. Marco, is all brushed up at the back.”

It was Mr. Morgan who had spoken. He was standing in front of his assistant, regarding him with a pained, dis-esteeming eye. So far as he could remember, this was the first occasion on which he had ever had to speak to the young man about his appearance.

“I'm sorry, sir.”

John Marco flushed as he said it. He was conscious of what the rebuke meant and was only glad that the young ladies had not emerged from their retiring-room to hear it. But he was aware also of a new emotion: he found himself despising Mr. Morgan instead of respecting him. There now seemed something contemptible about the idiotic narrowness of his life, its senseless regularity. There Mr. Morgan was in the presence of someone who had risked everything; someone who had chosen with his eyes open to walk a tight-rope slung between hell and heaven—and looked even like getting to the further side; and all that Mr. Morgan could think of to say to this astonishing person was that his hair was brushed up the wrong way.

But he went obediently and tidied himself in the cold, back lavatory. When he emerged he was the copper-plate assistant again. His paleness rather added to his appearance. And he was as attentive and efficient in his work as ever. He reprimanded one of the young ladies for her roughness in drawing a pair of the thin suede gloves over the fingers of a wax hand that stood on the counter (he had told her before that the pressure should be on the side of the fingers and not on the front where the wear would subsequently come); and he was inspired in the presence of a difficult customer who had already had half the shop turned out without seeing what she wanted. From a shelf in the stock room marked “Discards” he had got down a roll of dubious sateen that Mr. Morgan had
reluctantly regarded as unsaleable, and sold the customer the whole length. Mr. Morgan, who overheard the whole transaction, almost apologised for having criticised his star assistant.

But at seven o'clock when the shop closed, John Marco was already fainting with fatigue. When he had covered everything on the counter with the enshrouding dust-sheets he said good-night to Mr. Morgan who stood at the door like a benign and white-haired sentinel, waiting to pounce on any one of the minutiae of the business that had been left unattended to, and stepped out into the coldness of the street. The sharpness of the air braced him. He walked home briskly and steadily. A new feeling of calm had descended on him. He saw now that London, despite his crime, was going on very much as before. It was unaware of him. But when he got inside his own front door he found Mr. Tuke sitting by the empty grate in the parlour. He had been there ever since half past six, waiting for John Macro's return.

The air of suspense was heavy in the room when he entered it. His mother was there, covered up in shawls and dangling all over with jet and tippets, assiduously endeavouring to entertain Mr. Tuke. She was doing her best. In her high strained voice—she was so deaf that it was years since she herself had heard it—she was telling Mr. Tuke what a model son she had.

“But he didn't seem himself this morning,” John Marco heard her saying as he stood in the doorway. “He said someone had died. I couldn't find out who.”

“It was Mr. Trackett,” Mr. Tuke said loudly.

Mrs. Marco looked surprised.

“What about him?” she said. “You keep on mentioning his name. I don't know him.

But Mr. Tuke had already seen John Marco. He got up, towering impressively.

“I have something to say to you,” he said.

John Marco's heart betrayed him for a moment, and he wondered if he had gone pale. But he took the large,
pink hand that Mr. Tuke held out to him, and tried to look his Minister in the eyes.

“I'm sorry to have kept you waiting,” he said.

Then Mrs. Marco saw her son.

“You didn't tell me where you'd been last night,” she complained. “I sat up for you until I went to sleep.”

“I went to see Mr. Trackett,” he said. “I told you.”

“I thought you were going to the Immersion,” she said.

“Mr. Trackett was taken ill,” John Marco explained. “He died.”

Mrs. Marco paused, her mouth working.

“Everybody seems to have died,” she said. “It wasn't always like this.”

Mr. Tuke and John Marco exchanged glances; Mr. Tuke had had his fill of that kind of conversation.

“I wanted to speak to you about last night,” he said.

John Marco made no reply: he waited with tight lips for whatever it was that Mr. Tuke had to say.

The words, when they came, were reassuring, however; to his relief Mr. Tuke was purring over him.

“You did well,” he was saying. “Very well. You came to man's estate.”

“There was nothing that I could do,” John Marco replied quietly. He was careful to let his voice disclose no hint of emotion.

“You did a great deal,” Mr. Tuke corrected him. “You took the burden off a woman's shoulders.”

“She didn't know that he was going to die,” John Marco answered. “No one knew.”

“Perhaps Mr. Trackett knew,” Mr. Tuke suggested. “The last hours are sometimes very clear.” He came over and put his hand on John Marco's shoulder. “Miss Trackett is very grateful,” he said. “She thanks you.”

At the touch of Mr. Tuke's hand John Marco instinctively stepped back. Mr. Tuke seemed surprised; he took a pace forward and placed it there again.

“She wants to reward you,” he said.

“There's no call to do that,” John Marco replied. He paused and added under his breath, as though ashamed of the words, “I only did my duty.”

“It is not a reward as the world knows it,” Mr. Tuke explained, looking hard at John Marco. “It is not money or riches. It is a privilege, a hard and painful privilege that she is offering.”

“What is it?” John Marco asked.

“She wants you to be a bearer,” Mr. Tuke replied. “She honours you by asking you to be among those who carry our brother to the grave.”

John Marco stepped back again, this time right out of reach of Mr. Tuke's patronising hand.

“She wants me to do that,” he said.

His heart failed him at the words; he felt the past reaching out into the present and drawing him back again just as he was certain that he had escaped from it all. He wanted to have nothing more to do with the memory of Mr. Trackett or with that girl with the steady, bewildering eyes. They were something that belonged to a single dark page, almost a paragraph in brackets, of his life's clean history; it was not a page that he wanted ever to go back to and re-read.

But Mr. Tuke was a man of authority: he assumed acquiescence.

“And I know that you won't disappoint her,” he said. “It's not for her alone that you will be doing it,” he said. “It will be for me.
I
ask you.”

“What's that he's asking you?” Mrs. Marco enquired suddenly. “Why aren't I told anything about it?”

She got up and came towards them, her head thrust forward in an endeavour to catch some hint of what was going on around her. With her deafness she was as much cut off as if she had been alone. To her, it seemed that she was living in a world of sinister and malevolent conspiracy; even when she went shopping, the tradesmen with whom she had dealt for years whispered things that she could not hear.

“It's Mr. Trackett's funeral,” Mr. Tuke explained. “Your son has been asked to be a bearer.”

Mrs. Marco drew back her head like a tortoise.

“It's all deaths and funerals to-night,” she complained. “I don't like it.”

“You will do it, then?” Mr. Tuke asked, smiling on John Marco like the sun.

John Marco bowed his head.

“I will,” he answered.

“Excellent.” Mr. Tuke uttered the contented sigh of a man who has got his own way against difficulties. “Remember,” he went on, “you're one of the lucky ones. You have a home—a mother who loves you. This unfortunate young lady has no one.”

John Marco did not reply, and after a moment, Mr. Tuke resumed.

“Think of her sometimes,” he said. “Think of her when you are seated at your own fireside. Our brother had few friends. She will be very lonely.”

“I . . . I'll think of her,” John Marco promised.

“Excellent,” said Mr. Tuke again. “Excellent.”

He began buttoning up his coat and started to move towards the door, when he suddenly stopped himself.

“I was forgetting,” he said. “I have something that I want you to sign.”

John Marco was aware of his heart again, as Mr. Tuke spoke the words. He was suddenly afraid that it might be a confession that Mr. Tuke would put before him.

But it was only a piece of paper bearing the words in Mr. Tuke's finely pointed hand: “
This is to certify that the sum of money entrusted to my keeping by Mr. Ephraim Trackett on behalf of the Paddington Amos Immersionist Tabernacle and given by me to the Reverend Eliud Tuke amounted to
£875.”

John Marco read the form and handed it back to Mr. Tuke.

“I can't sign it,” he said.

Mr. Tuke seemed surprised.

“Why not?” he asked.

“I didn't count the money.”

“That's most regrettable,” said Mr. Tuke. “It's very awkward. It leaves me so unprotected if any questions should be asked. I'm only a steward remember. You don't think . . .?”

“If I signed that paper,” John Marco interrupted him, his lips drawn tightly back as he spoke, “I should be putting my name to a falsehood.”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Tuke sadly. “In that case it only remains for
me
to
give you
a receipt,” he said. He sat down at the circular table in the centre of the room, pushed the ornamental pot of maidenhair fern to one side and began to write.

When he had completed the chit, he handed it to John Marco with a little bow.

“That's all we can do for the present,” he said. “Perhaps the young lady will know how much was in the box. One can't be too careful with God's money. ...”

The Amosite Literary, Scientific and Debating Society met at seven-thirty on Tuesday evenings during the winter session. There were fourteen lectures in all, every one of them in its way uplifting, inspiring and instructive. To-night's was the fifth. The subject “Holy Places in the Holy Land,” was a tried favourite; the Reverend Mr. Shuttleworth, the lecturer, had delivered it more than two hundred times, and knew at any point throughout the fifty-five minutes of it just where to wait for the murmurs of appreciation. It was a lantern lecture—and lantern lectures always filled the Tabernacle. For people who had been in offices or at home all day, there was something strangely exciting and out-of-the-ordinary about sitting in Stygian darkness, reeking with the fumes of scorching enamel and hot metal-work, while a pale ray, like Hope, emanated from the oven-like box of the magic lantern and established a snap-shot of Rachel's Tomb upon the screen.

John Marco had not intended to go; this was another of those gatherings in which, until his conscience had worn a little cleaner, until the smirch was less noticeable, he felt he had no place. But when Tuesday evening came, he realised suddenly that by stopping away he would be doing the very thing he wanted to avoid—he would be making himself conspicuous. It was essential that in this as well as in everything else he should show no alteration; he must continue to go as freely as ever into the house which he had robbed if only to show that he still felt himself at home there.

And he had another reason for going. He would see Mary Kent; and he felt that he could no longer live without sight of her. The whole Kent family usually attended
these lectures. It was the one night in the week when Mr. Kent left his business, took his watchmaker's glass out of his eye, put down his tweezers and screw-driver and enjoyed himself. John Marco had often seen the three of them sitting there—Mr. Kent, small and fidgety and as wiry as a watch-spring himself, Mrs. Kent, large and faded and rather stupid-looking—and between them, Mary, the miraculous offspring of this uninspiring marriage. Ever since the day when he had first noticed her, he had been waiting for the time when he would be there by right, sitting beside her in the Tabernacle.

But as he went up the steep front steps of the Tabernacle, the memory of his sin suddenly descended; it extinguished him. He asked himself what point there was in dragging himself through the endless avenues of the future when, because of this one folly, he would be carrying his shackles about with him forever. He even, for a moment, thought of throwing himself on the mercy of the astonished Mr. Tuke and confessing everything. But as soon as he was inside, the mood passed; his fears fell from him. He wedged himself in the corner of his seat—the seats he had discovered from long experience, could be made as comfortable as a drawing-room chair provided the sitter's arms were kept folded so that the shoulder blades did not actually come into contact with the hard back of the seat—and marvelled at his previous panic.

Under the glare of the lights, among all these people, listening to the strains of the presentation organ, he was now inclined to laugh at himself. No one here suspected anything, no one guessed that he was changed in any way from the unblemished and respectable John Marco who had always attended. And how was he changed? As he got to his feet to allow a mother and her two plain daughters to crush into the pew beside him, he told himself that there was nothing about him that was different from his fellows. How could it have been a sin that he had committed, if he didn't feel like a sinner? And as he sat there he realised that this sin was something that
the years would reduce to its right proportion, something that would weaken and eventually die inside his conscience when, in the fulness of time, he had made his pile and paid back a hundredfold, this little he had borrowed, this paltry sum that no living being knew about and so could ever miss.