The Furnished Room (18 page)

‘You understand my ideas very well, don't you? That makes me suspect them.'

‘No, I'm a fraud, old boy. But I've equipped myself to deal with brainy types, because at one time I was always beaten in arguments. Just as I've equipped myself to deal with drunken navvies, because at one time I was always beaten in fights.'

Beckett lit a cigarette, then remembered and offered the packet to Dyce, saying: ‘Sorry. Have one.'

‘Thanks. Of course you realize that, even if you do not actually kill the old hag, you'll still be a murderer. You've promised not to inform; and that makes you legally and morally responsible.'

‘I understand that if she is killed I am guilty.'

‘That's it. And she will be killed. If you won't do it I will. You're condoning her death, so whether or not you actually kill her doesn't matter a snap of the fingers. I'm telling you this because there's something I want to make clear. If you refuse to kill her it will be because you're a coward. Not because you're moral.'

‘Stop arguing with words. This is too important.'

‘Important, yes!' Dyce bounded to his feet in one easy, animal movement. ‘And we won't get caught, either. I don't intend to hang. There are too many things I want to do. Believe me, Joe, this job is going to be foolproof.'

‘Have you worked it all out, then?'

‘Yes. Your part and mine. If you're with me, that is. Are you?'

The bar of sunlight had crept across the room to illuminate the tin tray under the gas ring, the packet of lard and the litter of spent matches.

Beckett said seriously: ‘I shall have to think it over. I need a week or two to do so.'

Dyce started to say something, but Beckett cut in: ‘There's nothing more to discuss. I've told you I'll make a decision within a couple of weeks, and the matter ends there.'

Dyce hesitated, then said: ‘All right!' He grinned suddenly, and punched Beckett's arm. ‘All right!' he laughed. ‘All right! All right!'

Beckett said nothing.

‘By the way, before I go, I'll return this.…' Dyce handed him the cardboard target with the bull in the centre eaten by shot. ‘Your rifle-range target. Dropped on the fairground. Another service of the invaluable Jacko.'

When Dyce had gone Beckett spent some time striding round the room. Occasionally he beat his fists on his forehead.

Murder would be a deliberate choice, an act of will in a world without free will. It would result in mental and spiritual torture to him; but torture was preferable to non-feeling. Better to be wrecked in the rapids of life than condemned to be the eternal spectator sitting on the bank.

His interest had always been in the criminal, never in the victim. Following, in the newspapers, the current trial of the man accused of child-murder, Beckett's interest had been exclusively in the man. The fact that there was one less child in the world did not interest him. Similarly, when Dyce had told him of his intended murder, he had automatically identified himself with Dyce, not with the aunt. Dyce was more interesting than the woman. The victim did not interest him, and therefore he had immediately promised not to inform.

As Dyce had said, to condone was to be guilty. If Beckett did not actually commit the murder, it would be through a sense of disbelief in the situation.

Thinking of various murder cases, it occurred to him that the criminal had been caught because he had subconsciously wished to be caught. The urge towards extreme experience stretched past the crime to the consequence which was the completion of the experience. The desire for punishment to follow crime was the result of society's long conditioning in Christian morality. He must guard against it.

If only he could decide what to do; whether to go forward into crime, or to shut his eyes and pretend he had never met Dyce.

It was one of the better times. He lay in bed beside Ilsa and felt very clear and alone, knowing that his own existence was the only truth.

He raised himself on his elbow and looked down at her. She was exhausted and immobile; her eyes were closed. He watched her hard, pale face with the dew of perspiration on her forehead and darkening the roots of her hair. She had a spent, half-dead look like a medium after a séance or a mother after giving birth.

He kissed her without losing the certainty that was hard as a diamond inside his head.

She opened her eyes. ‘Hello, you.'

‘Give me your hand, and I'll lead you out of the window and over the stars.'

She said fondly: ‘Crazy boy, we'd fall.'

‘No, I wouldn't fall, and I'd support you so you wouldn't fall either. Ilsa, I'm convinced I'm going to be a great man; that I have limitless potentialities.'

‘Oh, sure,' she said cynically, sleepily. ‘And as a start you're going to flip from star to star round the universe.'

‘It isn't conceit, you know. It's just sudden awareness of my own strength.' He climbed out of bed and went to the window. ‘Come and look out.'

Reluctantly, she obeyed. ‘What I suffer for you! Being dragged out of bed into the cold.…'

‘Look at the roofs. And the sky. And under the sky, all the lands stretching from here to Africa.'

Seeing that some comment was expected of her, she said: ‘Do you want to travel?'

‘Yes. Don't you?'

‘I'd like to go State Side. That's where all the high times are. This old country's dead.'

‘It isn't dead. I'm English.'

They stood together looking out; a naked man and a naked girl looking through a dingy lodging window. He put his arm round her shoulders. He was fascinated by the paradox which had fitted an ordinary, limited girl with such a perfect body. He felt that his strength and destiny were such that he could take her with him; carry her without even noticing her weight.

After a while, boredom made her shift from foot to foot. He said from his superior hardiness: ‘Get back into bed, love.'

‘I'll be glad to.'

He pulled on his raincoat for a dressing-gown and continued to gaze out of the window like a god surveying his territory.

From the bed, Ilsa said: ‘Christ, cigarette...' She stretched out an arm to reach her handbag. She grasped the bag clumsily; it opened and the contents fell on the floor. ‘Damn,' she said. ‘Be a honey, Joe.'

He retrieved her scattered belongings.

‘Joe...?'

‘You're beautiful, love. You really are.'

‘Joe...?'

‘Yes?'

‘I think I'm in love with somebody else.'

He continued to retrieve her things, putting them in her handbag. ‘I see.'

‘Oh, darling, I didn't want to do this. It kills me, doing this to both of us. But I couldn't help it. I honestly couldn't help it.'

‘You tell me this now.'

‘I've been trying to tell you all evening, but I couldn't. I kept thinking: I'll count to five and then tell him. But whenever I got to five, either you said something, or something happened, or I just didn't have the courage. But I wanted to tell you before we — you know — went to bed.'

‘Then why didn't you?'

‘I've
explained
why I didn't. And once we'd started kissing I couldn't break off.'

‘I didn't notice you trying to break off.'

‘Of
course
not. I've
said
I
couldn't
stop once we'd started. But I did mean to tell you before bed. I have got a moral code, you know.'

‘Have you? I thought you were a complete little tart.'

‘Oh, shut up, Joe. That's not fair. You don't mean it.'

‘I'm afraid I don't feel like being fair.' Then he asked: ‘And this man. Is he in love with you? Yes, of course, he must be. You get everyone you want, don't you?'

‘He said he couldn't live without me.'

‘Then he must be either a fool or a liar.'

‘Oh, stop it, Joe. Don't talk about it like that. You mustn't hate Larry; I want you to meet him and be friends. You can't let me down about this. You're the only person I can rely on.'

‘Please let's get this straight; it's you who are letting me down.'

‘Oh yes, I know, darling, and I do feel terribly bad about it.'

‘If he says he can't live without you he's obviously a very possessive type. You know you can't stand possessiveness. You'll be sick of him within a week.'

A note of self-satisfaction crept into her voice. ‘Well, actually, I like possessiveness. I mean it's very flattering. It's only that I react against it.' He kept an angry silence.

She exclaimed: ‘Oh, I know, you're right, I know. I know I'll get sick of him, and I'm telling you because you're the only person I'm honest with. But I can't help it, Joe. I wish I could help it but I can't. It's like being called by the Pipes of Pan or something, and the tune they play is life and excitement, and I can't resist them. I've got to go dancing after them.' Then she added: ‘And I did warn you, didn't I, Joe? I did warn you I wouldn't stay.'

He didn't answer.

‘Joe? I did warn you.'

He still didn't answer.

‘Didn't I warn you?'

‘Yes. You warned me.'

‘Well, then.'

‘Oh, for Christ's sake, shut up.'

For a while neither spoke, then a sudden thought struck him. ‘Have you slept with him?'

‘Don't shout at me like that.'

‘Have you?'

‘I said, don't shout at me. I'm being very decent, trying to break this gently to you, and you've no right to shout questions that aren't any business of yours anyway.'

He yelled furiously: ‘Have you or haven't you?' He raised his hand as if to strike her.

Made hysterical by fear, she yelled back: ‘Yes, yes, yes! I have, I have, I have!' Then, as the threat of a blow receded, she became calmer. With fear still flickering behind her eyes like a faulty connection, she hurriedly made excuses. ‘It was only once, honestly it was only once. I had to go home for a week; you've no idea how utterly boring my home is.' As she gained confidence, her voice became a complaining whine. ‘Just this stupid old farm, where nothing ever happens from one year to another. Dad out all day looking after the stupid old animals. Mum never thinking of anything but housework and cooking and all that boring stuff. They wouldn't even let me go to the village pub, bloody hell, although there's never anyone in the pub except a lot of local yokels with faces like mangel-wurzels or whatever those things are they plant the bloody fields with. And I couldn't even play my records because they don't like rock or jazz, and anyway their gram came out of the Ark and only plays seventy-eights. Well, anyway, I escaped for a day and went up to London. I was coming straight here to see you, honestly I was, but I thought I'd just pop into the Cellar Club on the way. And then I met this Larry. I didn't like him much at first but we went out for a drink together and, Christ, did I get drunk!...'

He said: ‘You sicken me.'

‘Don't, Joe. I can't bear it when you're angry. Nobody must be angry with me. Everybody must love me.'

He stared at her, taking in this new shock.

‘Everybody must love me,' she said again.

‘What do you want to be? Everybody's little darling? You've got to grow up, Ilsa. You can't be a spoilt child all your life, grabbing what you want and evading responsibility for what you do.'

She spread her fingers, sulkily examining the nails. ‘I haven't done anything so very awful.'

‘Haven't you?'

‘No.' She turned her hand, and examined her nails from another angle. ‘Not enough for you to stop loving me.'

‘You don't understand. I loved your body. No, more than that, I worshipped and adored it. Every inch. Every time you did so much as move your little finger it was a miracle. I'd rather watch you perform the most humdrum task than look at the most beautiful scenery imaginable. And now that I've found out what you've been doing, I feel disgust and nausea in exact proportion to the adoration I felt before. I never want to touch or even look at you again.'

She stared at him in silence, nervously pushing her hair back from her forehead. Then she burst into a furious tirade. ‘You loved my body! Yes, that's all you ever cared about! You never cared the least little bit for me as a person. You weren't even aware of my existence as a person. Other people are only objects to you. You've got no real contact with them at all. Well, I'm just about sick of being regarded as an object.' She lit a cigarette, and stabbed the air with the cigarette as she talked. The smoke made blue wraiths over her head. ‘You don't care about me; you only think of yourself. Oh, you're always kind and generous, but in such a patronizing way, like patting a pet animal on the head. Your kindness and generosity is only a way of asserting your superiority. You don't consider me an equal. I can't really affect you, so you can afford to be kind.'

Beckett felt suddenly tired. He was conscious of the absurdity of his appearance; sitting on the edge of the bed with bare hairy legs protruding from the raincoat. He said: ‘Yes, you're quite right. I'm sorry, Ilsa. I can't help the way I am. I'd like to be able to make contact, but I can't. I didn't realize that you'd guessed it, though.'

‘I'm not a complete ninny, you know. Although you consider me one.'

‘No.'

‘And what's more, you've no right to be angry because I've been unfaithful, I bet you're not faithful yourself, are you?'

‘That's different.'

‘It isn't different. I don't see that it's different at all.'

‘I'm a man.'