John Brown's Body (11 page)

No very great fist had been made of any of it. And one of John Brown’s suits was incomplete, the trousers were missing, and the waistcoat. And people remembered seeing him in a pair of bottle-green suede shoes. And none of these was found, even half burned or half washed. How did anyone get rid of suede shoes heavily stained with something that could hang him?

As the Judge pointed out, the fact of the vanished clothes was not a palpable fact. They might have been destroyed because they were incriminating or they might have been worn out and discarded. They were gone but that was not evidence. Only inferences could be drawn and inferences were of no help to a jury.

Again, the fact that John Brown had a key to 14 Casimir Terrace, a key which Miss Fran had had cut for him, was a negligible fact. To do the deed for which he was on trial John Brown did not require a key. He was well known to the sisters, an intimate in every sense, and they would admit him at any time. On the other hand, the Judge reminded the jury, the affidavits sworn by unimpeachable witnesses as to the accused’s presence at the material time, these were facts of the matter and could not be discounted.

Which sounded, thought Ralph, as if he meant to say that he knew and they knew, and wasn’t he glad that he wouldn’t have to subscribe to the verdict of them all.

John Brown hadn’t said anything when it was over, or if he had, the reporter hadn’t reported it. There was a picture, very fuzzy, as if it had been taken through cheesecloth, of him waving as he left the court. Rather a seaside gesture, Ralph thought it.

“I don’t think that these things are less important because they’re imaginary,” said Bertha, swerving violently as she leaned forward to dip her headlights at a road junction. “I mean, if they’re only in her mind they’re absolutely real to her and we’ve still got to cope and it won’t be as easy as if there really was something we could do something about.”

“I’d like to know where she got it from,” said Ralph. “One of the Sunday supplements, I suppose.”

“I’m not even sure that it is imaginary. Not absolutely. There have been scientific and medical tests and it was definitely proved, Emmy says, that everything, every single thing, has its own emanations and they need not be harmless, they can clash with one person and not with another.”

Ralph braced himself for her last-minute dead stop at the empty zebra crossing.

“It isn’t as if she’s gullible,” said Bertha, going down through the gears. “She never believed in the stars. When we were girls it was all the rage to get your horoscope done but Emmy wouldn’t. ‘I’ll paddle my own canoe,’ she used to say.”

“I shall look a fool, asking about water-diviners.”

“Oh I don’t think so, dear. Emmy says they’re used in industry nowadays.”

“Emmy says! Haven’t you got a mind of your own?”

There was a hurt silence and when, in her unhappiness, she forgot the handbrake and the car began to run backwards he said sourly, “You’ll kill us one of these days.”

They roared up the hill from the estuary in bottom gear. Conversation was impossible but she looked round at him and he thought she said that she was sorry. So was he, but he did not admit it.

As they swung into the Thorne Farm track she said humbly, “I have to tell you what Emmy says because I no longer know what she thinks,” and Ralph almost asked did
she really expect to? Didn’t she know that the most that could be done was to think thoughts for other people? Even sisters, even blood sisters’ thoughts were not the same. Certainly one of those women at Casimir Terrace had not dreamed what the other was thinking.

“She’s going to be ill and we must do something.
She
can’t. She won’t change her room, she says what would be the use. I don’t even know if she really believes in the rays.”

“I thought you said it didn’t matter.”

Bertha stopped the car outside the house and turned to him. “Oh my dear, if we don’t care, who will?”

She was not rebuking, only asking if he could care, really asking what would become of Emmy if he couldn’t.

*

He saw a change in her. She had puffed up like a sick fowl. She made a business of moving around and sat down as if she should not have been expected to get up, her rather splendid discontent tending to fretfulness. It could be self-induced, it could be one of her extremes which she was pushing herself to. Anyone could act tired.

He sighed as he dropped heavily into a chair and there was Bertha crying, “Ralph’s worn out!”

Why should Emmy want to be seen to be ill? She had always queened it, she had the material advantages – money and the house – and had made it appear a little ludicrous that he and Bertha only had each other.

“Has it been a busy week?” Bertha would have brought him his slippers but Emmy did not like people wearing slippers except in their bedrooms.

“Eventful more than busy.”

Emmy herself wore high heeled court shoes and each instep stood up like a ball. Did her feet usually swell towards the end of the day?

“What events, dear? What’s been happening?”

“Nothing really, at least nothing that would mean anything
to you.” He was struck by the enormousness of the lie and stared at Bertha in dismay.

Emmy was the one who would not accept it. “Why shouldn’t it mean anything to us?”

“It was business.”

“Was there a take-over bid? For Picker, Gill?”

He wondered, if he were to tell them – “I met a rare creature, her name is Marise and she believes I am a murderer. She believes I murdered two women, two doting sisters like you –”

“Was there a merger? Why not a consortium of weed killers? To make them more lethal?”

If he told them, “She
wants
to believe that,” they would have the bare bones of the truth –

“Why stop at weeds?” said Emmy. “Or pests? Who’s to say who isn’t, definitely isn’t, a pest?”

– bare enough to be a distortion of it. And this they would accept, Emmy would insist on it. First and last Emmy would insist on a lie.

“You’ll never be out of business. ‘Killing Unlimited’ – hasn’t anyone realised the possibilities?”

“No take-over bids, just development. In business nothing happens for months, then everything happens in a week.” In life too, and he had cherished its uneventfulness, one day following another had been his method of happiness. Happiness was the desired norm then. Not any more, not for him, because a norm had to be shared – if only with his own past. “I don’t want to go into business history.”

“Why not? We have the time.”

“Supper will be ready in five minutes,” said Bertha.

“Let’s go into the history of one of your deterrents, from when it was a little noxious grain blowing about on the wind to now when it has a helicopter to drop it on the fields.”

Bertha leaned over and touched him in a rallying way. “I should go and wash your hands, dear.”

“What are we having?”

“Chicken. A little white meat will be good for Emmy.”

“I don’t want anything.”

“Emmy, you must –”

“Except perhaps a brandy.”

“You must eat – Ralph, she hasn’t had a thing all day.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m not hungry. Don’t worry, it’s not serious. You needn’t ask me how I am.”

“I told him,” Bertha said quickly. “We talked about you all the way from the station.”

“How fascinating.” Emmy lay back in her chair and closed her eyes. “Is he going to get me a brandy?”

“Ralph will look after you,” said Bertha, “while I see to the supper.”

Neither of them knew that Marise was standing at his elbow. He had been keeping her for his own use, so to speak, but Bertha and Emmy had conjured her up and her presence filled the room. He might believe in ghosts, but she was much more than spirit. If Emmy had not had her eyes shut he believed she must have seen Marise standing out all over him.

“You don’t care what happens to me,” she said when he took the brandy to her. He remembered Scobie saying that in much the same tone: it was a help to her, a luxury almost, to have an imaginary pain after so much of the real thing. He remembered what sickness was like, watching Scobie die had made him an expert. He had come to know the testimony of every pore and every hair. “You don’t care so long as it doesn’t happen to the side your bread’s buttered.” Emmy was not really ill, she was slightly distempered as a matter of policy. Under her puffiness was a robust constitution, she couldn’t hide the small signs of health.

“Of course you’d like me to die. It would be a really useful thing for me to do, and leave everything to Bertha, to you and Bertha.”

She was wide of the truth but it struck him that she wouldn’t like the truth any better.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you,” he said.

“Go away.” Her hand, lifted to wave him away, struck his chest and she let it lie, palm down, against his waistcoat. “You’re such a terribly small man.”

“But I think you’re trying to make something happen and we ought to care about why.”

Her eyes blinked open as suddenly as one of those china dolls with their eyeballs on lead weights. “Bravo, darling!”

“If you’d ever been really ill you wouldn’t try to make it happen again.”

“Is that what I’m doing? I’m making quite a good job of it then.” Taking the brandy from him she threw up her chin and drained the glass. “There’s something wrong with this place. There has to be.”

Afterwards he told Bertha that Emmy was persuading herself that she was ill but would soon tire of the pretence.

“She can’t endure restriction, she won’t be able to keep the act going.”

“She’s never been ill in her life,” said Bertha. “It doesn’t make sense for her to pretend to be now.”

“Depends what you call sense.”

“There’s something wrong somewhere. She won’t let me send for the doctor. She says here –” Bertha pointed to the floor – “down here is what’s wrong. Won’t you do as she asks, dear? If someone came and divined, or whatever they call it, it would set her mind at rest. After all, she
believes
and it’s what we believe that matters, isn’t it?”

“She’s jealous, that’s what’s wrong.”

“Jealous?”

“Of anyone who’s got anything she hasn’t.”

“But she has everything she wants, within reason, and she’s not unreasonable. She wouldn’t waste time wanting anything she knew she couldn’t have.”

“She might if it was anything that had to be given, and wasn’t.”

Bertha said reprovingly, “She’s not alone, she’s got us.”

She hadn’t got him. Nor had Bertha now.

*

Tomelty told Marise to get dressed.

“Put on everything you’ve got, that pink suit and some sparklers and a face. I’ve forgotten what you look like in a face.”

“Have I got to go out?”

“That’s right. I have to see a couple of homs and I want them to see you.”

“Why?”

“Never mind, do as I say.”

She knew why, she had been exhibited before. Tomelty liked to show her to his business acquaintances. She was well aware that her effect was of several double whiskies – which Tomelty had not had to pay for. And she enjoyed leading them all on, really it was a continuation, an amplification of the leading-on of Tomelty which was one of the mercies of being married.

But she no longer needed to count mercies. Something had happened, an important development. Tomelty did not realise: Tomelty, as usual, was in black ignorance.

“I don’t want to go out.”

“You’ve got ten minutes to fix yourself.”

She laid her hands on her stomach. “It’s like a saw-edged bread knife turning in a wound.”

“What is?”

“The pain.”

“You haven’t got a pain!”

“Barbra has, she’s got stomach-ache.”

Tomelty seized her by the chin. “But I can give you a pain, I can really give you something to think about, ma cherry.”

She shook her head and he gripped her chin. “Do you think I couldn’t?”

His capacity no longer interested her, she no longer wondered how far he would go. She had, she now realised, always known that he would go no distance at all.

“You’d just do it if you were going to, you wouldn’t talk about it. He never says a word about what he did.”

“Who?”

“He never once said to them that he would kill them.”

Tomelty gave her a shove and she fell on to a folding stool which folded under her, so she sat on the floor laughing, the white stripes of his fingers still showed where he had gripped her cheek. As she laughed the stripes were flushed out, her skin turned pink, silver pink.

“You’re talking rubbish,” said Tomelty, “you always talk rubbish and that’s how you’ve lived this long. I spare you because you’re not responsible.”

“You’ve never had your picture in the papers, have you?”

“Not for murder, no.”

“Nor anything else. Not even in an advertisement. Even Barbra’s been in an advertisement for stockings.”

“Don’t push me, Gyp. Try shutting your mouth.”

Marise lay flat on the floor and clasped her hands under her head. “You’re jealous, I can see that. He says there’s a lot of jealousy, people getting jealous of what he did.”

“He says? Bobsworth upstairs? What does he know about it?”

“He says people are jealous because they’d like to have done it themselves. You wouldn’t like to mess about with those women, would you? You wouldn’t like to touch them? He’d have to, wouldn’t he, he’d have to touch them everywhere for what he did?” She shone up at him from the grubby floor, fresh as a daisy among the old brown sticks of furniture. “I’d die if he was to touch me.”

Tomelty, who had been losing his temper, suddenly got it back, better than ever. He went on his knees beside her.

“I’ll prove to you he isn’t Johnny Brown.”

Frowning, she pushed her chin down into her neck. “My bosom’s not big enough, I can see my feet over it.”

“It’s big enough for me.” He put out his hand and she rolled away from him on to her side. “I’m going to stop you talking rubbish. There’s someone who knew him better than I did – she’ll tell you. Whatever she tells you stays told.” He said softly, “And she knows you, Gyp.”

“You can’t stop me talking. Unless you kill me. Do you think he’ll do it for you?”

“She never liked him, not really. They used to be very thick and she used to pack us out of the way when he came. That was some friendly society! And she often gave him a meal, I daresay she’d have given him anything else he fancied if he’d fancied it. But when she heard he’d been arrested she said, ‘I never trusted him’.” Tomelty smiled. “She didn’t want to.”

“She can’t stop me talking.”

“We’ll have her over and show her that wuzzo upstairs. She’ll tell you who he is.”

“I shall keep talking about Mr Shilling. I like him.”

Tomelty stood up, dusting his knees. “Talk about him, like him if you like, but don’t call him John Brown.”

*

Towards the end of her life Scobie had felt extraordinary – after all, it was extraordinary to be dying and to know it – and when Ralph saw that she excluded him along with the rest of the world, he was hurt. Then he came to understand why she was excluding him and that cruelty was bigger than both of them.

“You’re the same as everyone else,” she told him and it still hurt although he knew that she was loving and envying that sameness. She meant him to rejoice in it and cruellest of all was having to think himself lucky. He had tried to tell her that he was not one of a gay mob, but he could see that it only complicated things for her. She had reached a stage when she could not differentiate, indeed she had no time to.

Of course he was the same as everyone else – conformity was what civilisation was about – and throughout Scobie’s dying it was not the fact of being the same as other people which bothered him but the fact of not being with her, being cut out, surgically excised.