John Brown's Body (18 page)

“No!” He put his hands on her shoulder blades and struck her rather than pulled her into his arms. She turned her face aside and stood, dangling stiffly, her chin in her shoulder, and between his fury and tenderness and fear of doing the wrong thing or not doing anything at all he was ready to break her neck to get to her lips. “This must happen –”

“I don’t believe you’re John Brown.” She spoke out of his fingers. “Nobody does. You’re as like him as a tenpenny rabbit.”

He had believed that he would brush the dew off for a moment, an exclusive, recurring moment, recurring only to him, and had bitterly longed to do it.

“Then why did you pretend –” the less to accuse her he amended that to – “Why did you let me think it was important to you to believe it?”

“I tried to help you.” His hand felt like the flat of a knife pressing between her shoulders. “Jack did it for a laugh, but I did it to help.”

She was so close that her neck curved out of his own chest. With his finger tips he stroked the moist skin of her cheek and pressed the flesh into the bone.

“You wouldn’t help yourself,” she said, “you left everything to me. I’ve had enough, I shan’t try any more.” She wanted to move away because she had had enough of that too. He was pulling at her as if he meant to pull her to pieces. She put her hands on his chest. “You’re hurting –” He was worse than Jack, she saw that he wouldn’t laugh or cry and it caused her a stab of uncalled-for alarm.

She began to fight him. They struggled in desperation, he was unaware of the damage she did to him but she was mutilated by every hurt and plundered by the restraint of his hands. She tried to slip through them like a child in a
tantrum. Her head fell back and her dress rode up. He dropped with her to the floor, chest to chest, and pinned her down with his weight.

It was a shock to him afterwards to realise how he had refused to hear the roar of the car along the track. He wondered what sort of madness it was, fallen angel’s or risen beast’s, that could ignore Bertha’s first gear like a tractor going up a mountain. Some saving instinct brought him to earth when the engine stopped. He got to his feet and stood over Marise, straddled her as she lay.

“Help me.” There was her torn and twisted dress – put that right, he meant, but didn’t think it could be. If she was willing and able to hide what had been done to her, she couldn’t hide what had been done to her clothes. He raised her and pushed her into a chair. “Do something, please –”

But going down the stairs he wondered what he was worrying about. It must be force of habit because what Bertha and Emmy thought was of no consequence now and never would be again. Damn them, he thought without rancour, agreeably even, it was such a free feeling.

Then something, the good-plus atmosphere of the place, extinguished it. He had better be prudent, not over-concerned nor throwing anything away, not yet.

He brushed himself down and paused to check in the mirror. What they might notice about him was his freedom, that was glaringly obvious. He stood smoothing his hair as Bertha opened the door. He had the brave feeling of being about to upset his own applecart.

They exclaimed at sight of him. Bertha was startled and said “Oh!” and Emmy uttered her cry which could be of pleasure or pain. They were both so familiar – like the start of the National Anthem. They could never surprise him again.

Bertha put down her shopping-bag and came to him. “Is something wrong? Ralph dear, whatever’s the matter?”

“What are you doing here?”

He did not miss the suspicion in Emmy’s voice.

“Aren’t you well, dear?”

Bertha was eager, always looking for trouble to take on.

“How did you get in?”

He smiled. So Emmy suspected him of forcing a lock. “With Bertha’s key.”

“You had it? I thought I’d lost it.”

“
Why
did you get in?”

“Oh Ralph, you didn’t come all this way just to bring back my key?”

“No.”

“Then why?” said Emmy. “On a Tuesday?”

“Why not? On Tuesday or any other day?”

“One would expect you to be working in your office on Tuesday.”

“I took time off.” They were mystified: Bertha preparing reasons for him, Emmy preparing to explode them. “You’re back early from Chelmsford,” he said.

“Emmy was tired, she couldn’t even stop to have lunch. Now we can all have it together.” Bertha told Emmy, “That will be nice,” and it irritated Ralph, it always did, having her try to make a treat of him.

He said coolly, “I don’t imagine you can cater for two extra, we’ll get something at the Plough.”

“
Two
extra?”

“I have someone with me.”

Emmy glanced towards the stairs and there was Marise coming down. Emmy’s face seemed to collapse, the carefully erected eyebrows and the powder put on like fur and her boldly painted mouth suddenly lost coherence, as if something essential had been whipped away.

Marise had combed her hair and put on the pony-coat. She was solemn and looked at Emmy.

“Ralph, you didn’t tell us we had company!”

“Who is this?” said Emmy.

“This young lady is a professional diviner,” said Ralph. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“I’m sure there’ll be enough for four –”

Emmy caught at Bertha’s arm. “A water-diviner? Is that what she is?”

“My name is Marise Tomelty,” Marise said firmly. “How do you do?” She held out her hand. Bertha took it, Emmy did not move.

“You must excuse us, we had no idea my husband was bringing you, and my sister has been unwell, we had to come back from town because the shops tired her, and it’s a good thing we did. They serve such stodgy food at the Plough and when you’ve come all this way you must have a nice lunch.”

“We can’t stay,” said Ralph. “We’re catching the two-fifteen back. I’ll ring for a taxi.”

“She’s got a headache,” Marise said of Emmy, and drew her finger across her own forehead at the hair line. “From outside in.”

“How do you know?”

“She looks as if she’s trying to see through eggwhite. I take two aspirins and lie down when I have a head like that.”

Emmy was holding on to Bertha, leaning on her, Ralph noticed, and she was no light weight, Emmy was considerable in every way.

“Dear, you should be resting.” Bertha tried to lead her to a chair but it was Emmy who obliged Bertha, as her prop, to move with her towards Marise.

“What did you find?”

“She found nothing,” said Ralph.

Emmy ignored him. “Where did you try? Which part of the house? What happened?”

“She tried everywhere and nothing happened. There’s no water under this house.”

“There,” said Bertha, with loving comfort, “isn’t that what I’ve said all along? Perhaps now that Ralph’s set your mind at rest we’ll ask Dr Chinn to look at you –”

“Is it true?” Emmy said to Marise.

“Would you like a dowser’s deposition?” said Ralph. “A signed guarantee that she found no water?”

“But I did.”

Marise’s coat had fallen open and as she pulled it round her Ralph saw the tear down the front of her dress, he hoped he was the only one who saw it.

“You told me to,” Marise said to him, “and I did.”

“I didn’t tell you to do anything – except try for it.”

“Well, I found it.”

“Where?”

“Under the stairs.”

Absurdly, they turned and looked at the staircase. Emmy left Bertha’s side and started up it, she stood at the pedestal of the banisters, leaning on it and looked down at them as if she were in a pulpit.

“It’s here in the middle of the house, where there’s no getting away from it. I knew, I feel it taking my strength, bleeding me.” She stooped towards Ralph, “You feel nothing, you believe nothing, care nothing. You were going to deceive me.”

“He wasn’t there,” said Marise, “I was by myself when I found it.”

“How did you find it?” asked Bertha.

“She can’t tell you that,” said Ralph, “it’s a professional secret.”

“Did you carry a hazel twig?”

“It’s not essential. She could carry a rod, or a ball and chain or a penny marble on a string. She need not carry anything at all.”

“My twig broke to smithereens,” Marise told Emmy. “I expect you’ll come across the bits.”

“We must be going. I’ll ring for the taxi,” said Ralph.

“That won’t be necessary,” Emmy said sharply, “Bertha will drive you to the station.”

“Bertha’s tired –”

“We’re both tired and I’m tired to death.” Emmy turned to Marise with an eagerness which Ralph found alarming. “There’s war in this house, in the air, in the timbers, in the
bricks.” She made one of her old violent gestures. “And I’m the only one who will fight.”

Marise nodded, glancing at Bertha. “She’s the quiet one, isn’t she?”

“She doesn’t fight, she endures. Oh, don’t make any mistake, she’s stronger than me, she’ll endure for ever, she’ll never lose and never win.”

“You’ll never win either,” said Marise.

Bertha began to say, “Of course I’ll take you to the station, but what about lunch? You mustn’t miss your lunch, it’s so bad for you to miss your lunch, Ralph –”

“We’ll get a sandwich.” He took Marise by the elbow. “We must go now.”

“You understand what I’m going through,” Emmy said to her. “Lassitude, headaches, sleeplessness, that’s the lesser part. I have pain, that’s a protest from my body at having to put up such a resistance. Or is it a warning? Of what? What breaks down first under constant stress – heart, lungs, liver, bowels?”

“She isn’t a doctor,” said Ralph.

“My identity went first. I don’t have my own thoughts now and I cannot manage my own body. I don’t have my own nightmares either, God knows whose bogeys those are.”

Marise looked at Ralph. “
He
knows.”

“My brother-in-law has no imagination, he knows only what he sees.” Emmy slid down and sat on the stairs. She looked unutterably tired and Ralph thought she could have her reasons for acting the fool – as Scobie had had hers for cutting him out. “I’ve always been physically strong, I’ve fought this for years without knowing it. Now that it’s beginning to undermine my health and pull me into the ground, now I know what I’m up against.”

“Ralph, talk to her,” begged Bertha.

Emmy closed her eyes. “Yes, talk to me.”

“You need Chinn to talk to you, not me.”

“You’re a man of few words and you mince even those. Why don’t you say I’m mad?”

“You’re frightened.”

“I’d be a fool if I wasn’t. Life’s all I’ve got to lose, it’s really all any of us has. You too, Ralph, for all the life you’ve taken, every little hour of every little bug must make quite an aggregate, but it hasn’t put a minute on yours. Doesn’t that frighten you, darling?”

It was Marise who answered “No.”

Bertha blinked at her, Emmy seemed to accept that she spoke for Ralph. “He’s only a killer by trade,” she said, “he couldn’t harm a fly if he had to watch himself doing it. It’s so clean and tidy with sprays and aeroplanes. I think I should like him better if he did it for love.”

“Love?” said Bertha.

“Enjoying it.”

“I make my living,” said Ralph.

“And was there no other way?” Emmy opened her eyes. “To do the worst for no reason is to be damned to hell.”

“You’ve torn your dress.” Bertha was gazing at Marise whose coat hung wide open. “How did that happen?”

“I think there’s a waterfall under your stairs,” said Marise.

That was on Tuesday. By Wednesday Ralph had reached some conclusions. One, he was finished with Thorne: whatever had been there for him had run out or ceased to matter: two, he was going to take Marise away: three, he needed money to do that: four, he could get his two hundred back, he now had nothing to lose from that quarter or from any of the old quarters. He recognised that the money was not absolutely his, but it was unquestionably more his than Picker, Gill’s, or Krassner’s. Two hundred pounds was the right shape and it was the only money in sight.

Throughout Wednesday morning he sat at his desk and thought. He scribbled on his noteblock, he saw that he was scribbling pound and dollar signs, and rows of boxes. It was inconceivable that he could have had that much money actually in his hand, the essential sum, and let it go again. He couldn’t accept that it was gone, at this very late moment he experienced the sheer disbelief that would have followed had he just dropped it down a drain.

By lunch-time he was so occupied with the problem of the money that it went without thinking that everyone else was too. Pecry certainly must be, Pecry had the devil’s own job of making the problem insoluble.

When Pecry asked, as they stood side by side washing their hands, “Did you settle that matter to your satisfaction?” Ralph did not reply immediately. He had no intention of telling Pecry everything, even though Pecry needed no telling. He pretended to be absorbed in soaping his hands.

“The family matter,” Pecry said sharply, “which you had time off to attend to.”

“Oh, that. Yes.”

“No problems?”

“No.”

“You’re lucky.”

“I had nothing to lose. That’s freedom, when you realise it.”

“Freedom?”

With Pecry’s stiff collar choking the knot of his tie, the word came from his throat frivolous and brilliant, exploding over the washbasins and changing everything. One thing, one relatively small thing changed was Ralph’s attitude. He was no longer afraid of Pecry, Pecry was invoices made flesh, a money sign, in himself worthless.

“It’s an attitude of mind, ultimately it’s just mind –” in his own case, Ralph remembered, there was body too – “you’ve only to change it.”

“Change what?”

“Your problem’s reputation, face is what you’re afraid of losing, isn’t it? So either settle on something lesser to lose, like your sleep or your money’s worth or, better still, on something to gain –” but that was what Pecry was really afraid of, of gaining something lively and bloody which would disarrange his frozen grey muzzle – “and you too can be a free man.”

Pecry tore off a paper towel and dabbed his hands. “I trust you’re not trying to be offensive as well as nonsensical. I’m entitled to ask the nature of your family business since you were given the firm’s time to conduct it in. Incidentally, it is not to be regarded as establishing a precedent.”

“I promise not to have any more family business.” Ralph said, eyeing himself in the mirror, “I think I can promise not to have any more family.”

Pecry also looked at him in the mirror. “Questions of immorality are referred to the Board.” He touched his dry mouth from corner to corner with his tongue. “You know the Chairman’s views.”

Ralph knew. Marriage was the bridge by which the Chairman of the Board spanned the gulf between himself and members of Picker, Gill’s staff. They were all married, he told them, from the office cleaners through to himself, and those who weren’t had soon better be. The advantages of
marriage – material benefits and spiritual blessings – and, roguishly, the teeny drawbacks, came into his speeches and directives. He sent a personal gift when a member of staff married, as yet no-one had had the courage to get divorced.

“Tell him I intend to commit adultery as soon as I can afford it,” said Ralph after the door had closed on Pecry.

*

He thought of borrowing money but knew no-one with that much to lend, except Emmy. He liked the idea of Emmy financing his escape with Marise, he would like to be the kind of man who could bring it off. Why not? He had only to think up a reason for the loan, a reason that would seem reasonable to Emmy. Like what? Like if he was unable to take Marise away from Tomelty he would soon be crazy. Yes, he thought soberly, I’ll go out of my mind.

She was in his blood, sometimes a rage, always an ache. Everything tended to go into her as into a chasm – Bertha, Emmy and Picker, Gill, everything and everyone was swallowed up. Except Krassner: Krassner remained just outside, a finger-hold.

There was one other course open to him. He could cash a cheque on their joint account. The money was really Bertha’s. Surprisingly, there was enough left of him for scruples, he would much rather not do it. He would do it, though, he would have to if he could get nothing out of Krassner.

He returned to the office after lunch, perhaps for the last time. He had been bound to the place, cherished his goings and comings at the same times with the same thoughts, and dreaded deviation. He had been content. Or dead. It didn’t matter, he was alive now and fully operative, all his components working, the greater parts of him which had been sealed up and idle were working strongly and fluently, he was unafraid. He had the answer to everything. He had, he was going to have, Marise.

Krassner and a girl were cheek to cheek in Krassner’s
office, her elbows on his desk, her rump elevated and swaying. Whatever they were doing they weren’t working. Krassner took a coin from his pocket and dropped it into the neck of the girl’s blouse. She shook herself lingeringly – shoulders, breasts, hips and thighs – and the coin fell at her feet.

“Tea money,” Krassner told Ralph.

Ralph had given this girl dictation, she was self-possessed in a narcissistic way, constantly stretching out a leg to look at her ankle, lifting her lashes on her finger and checking over her hair. None of that had been directed at him, she was merely working at herself, she had found time to correct Ralph’s grammar.

He picked up the coin, as he handed it to her he wondered what her melting point was. Krassner knew it, of course.

“I want to talk to you.” He told himself that Krassner’s was not so much a golden as a buttery touch.

“Talk away.”

“In my office,” said Ralph.

As he sat at his desk to wait for Krassner the touch looked more like a dirty thumbprint. It must make for sameness: even success, he thought, even sexual success would pall if it was a built-in feature.

“Shut the door,” he said when Krassner came lounging in.

“Secrets?”

“Yours.”

Krassner back-kicked the door. It slammed and in the draught the leaves of Ralph’s noteblock stood up covered with pound and dollar signs.

“I only have one,” said Krassner, “and that really is secret.”

“Two hundred pounds is what I want to talk about.”

“Whose?”

“It was Sweetland’s, it became Picker, Gill’s.”

“Oh that two hundred.” Krassner sat down and crossed his knees. He wore yellow suede boots.

Ralph said sharply, “It was never at any time yours but it was, and still is, mine.”

Krassner nodded. “Somewhere among Picker, Gill’s bloated profit margin are those crisp clean Shilling pound-notes, back in the dirty waters of commerce where they originally came from.”

“No!”

Ralph stopped himself, he couldn’t say that the money was Bertha’s and there was no point in saying anything else. “I want that money, Krassner.”

“I understand your feelings, you’re talking to one who loves money, though not as platonically as you.”

“You’re going to give me back my two hundred pounds.”

“I am?” Krassner smiled. “Old chap, I’m so much in the red it shows through if I scratch myself.”

“I’m not joking, I paid that money to cover your debt, your
crime.
You’ll go to jail for defalcation, Krassner.”

“Maybe I shall. You’ll have a case to answer too. To Pecry. We know Pecry, he’ll make two cases out of it, concealment of fraud and breach of trust. Oh boy!” Krassner shook his head and whistled through pursed lips. “The bigger they come, the harder they fall. I’m only fodder, but you’re senior staff and Pecry will have his foot on your neck for life.”

“I don’t give a damn about Pecry –”

“He’ll have you up before the Board, court-martial you and publicly unbutton you.”

“Or about the Board, or about Picker, Gill. This is your debt, I met it to save your skin.”

Krassner reached for Ralph’s tossing-stone. “You met it to save your own. A stiff price for an office skin, but you knew what it was worth to you. Or did you?”

Ralph felt a rocket blast off inside him, illuminating Krassner, his mischief and his faculty for spreading it.

“You can’t threaten me, not any more. I’ve nothing to lose. And I warn you – I warn you –” the blast reached
Ralph’s fists, he was no fighting man but he had an urge to use them now.

Krassner smiled. “You’ve changed your tune. All right, you need two hundred pounds, a nice familiar figure and I can understand it, but I can’t give it to you. Even if I had it. There are some prior claims, very prior. You’re not even the left hind leg.”

He was voluptuously slipping the polished stone from one palm to the other. Ralph leaned across and knocked it out of his hands.

“I don’t care what else you owe or where you owe it.”

“Why not ask Pecry? Legally it’s your money, surely even Pecry wouldn’t expect you to suffer
and
pay?”

“I don’t care how you get it, just get it!”

Krassner good-humouredly picked up the stone and replaced it on the desk. “I’m truly sorry, old chap. Wish I could help. If it’s so important why don’t you do what I did?” Ralph had seen him smiling like that at women, handing them drinks that he hadn’t paid for, touching them, stripping them with his smile. “You’ve got the motive and the opportunity – help yourself.”

“I could kill you, Krassner!”

Indeed he could. The essential thing was to wipe out the smile and at the moment he could have killed to do it. But the desk was between them and the desk saved Krassner.

*

Marise had spent the day in bed. It was her practice to do so when too much had been happening. She curled herself up like a French roll, a ‘cross aunt’, as Jack said. She did not like to be taken far in any one direction unless she herself had chosen where it led.

Under the blankets, in darkness and privacy, she remembered the happening of yesterday. It made her tremble, it was almost the worst ever. The first time had been the worst because she had been totally unprepared and had almost died and had known that she could die, cut out of her bones
while people looked on and held her down. She knew what it meant to be the butterfly on the pin when someone set fire to its wings.

She moaned, curling deeper into the dark. Nothing was finished or forgettable, Jack said that everyone went off balance sometime – at spiders or red rags or, in his case, temperance hotels. But this thing of hers was so almighty that she would have prayed to it if it would have done any good, asked to be let off a little, excused just enough to make it endurable. Painlessness she did not expect, not without she died and was born another person, but a little less cruelty, a grain of consciousness – the final humiliation was in not knowing herself – this she would have begged and prayed for if she thought anyone or anything was listening.

But she knew without being told that this was beyond human relations, that was what made it so terrible. It wasn’t natural, either, it did not strike like lightning or swallow like an earthquake, it was all over the place and going on all the time.

Presently she was able to lie quietly, the dried salt on her cheeks, and think about the other. And she could smile, wondering how kings and policemen expected to be taken seriously if they all did this monkey thing. She had yet to meet with any style in it, let alone any mystery. And she had met it often enough, often and often. Propping her elbows, she lifted the bedclothes on her knees glimmering like eggs. Did style and mystery hide only a multitude of monkeys?

People who supposed Marise a fool believed themselves to be clever: ‘fly’ was the word Tomelty used, with him it was a matter of shadow-boxing so that no-one should go behind his back. Marise had noticed that people had to have other people to achieve cleverness, they couldn’t achieve it on their own. She couldn’t achieve it anyway, nor did she wish to. All she need do was wait for the monkey.

In the afternoon Uncle Fred Macey arrived. When she did not answer his knock he went to the window and beat
on it. She was afraid he would break the glass, she had to get out of bed and let him in.

“What’s up?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“I thought you’d got trouble.” He pressed down his chin and looked at her as if she were a needle he was trying to thread. “Thought I should have to force an entry.”

“I was in bed.”

“Are you ill?”

“Of course not.” Marise walked about squeamishly in bare feet, experiencing gritty dust and the cold pang of lino. “I was still in bed from last night.”

“You shouldn’t go about like that.”

“I like my feet bare.” At Plummer Court she often didn’t wear shoes, walking on the wall to wall carpet was like walking on birds. Jack had called her feet “P.A.New”.

“In that shift thing you’re damn near bare all over. Suppose someone was to see you?”

“You’re seeing me.”

“I’m family.” Uncle Fred rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and left one bar of his moustaches cocked.

Marise had come across a packet of cornflakes and realised that she had eaten nothing since yesterday. She took the box to the window and ate the flakes from her fingers. It was a grey day, the pebbles in the drive were the colour of iron but a woman walking towards the house wore a hat which Marise envied, butter-yellow and bristling. Marise might have eaten it or warmed herself at it or just sat in its glory. She recognised the woman without interest. Bertha Shilling was a dull person and Marise did not care what she might have come here for.

The cornflakes tasted of cardboard. Had Jack been at home they would have had a meal and perhaps some of the pink wine called ‘Rosie’. She wanted him to be home because the dread of yesterday was still with her. He always understood and held her, gripped into a merciful little blackness. He wouldn’t be home for four more days.