The rivals of Sherlock Holmes : early detective stories (13 page)

“We’ better eat something or we’ll both be under the table.”

Alec had the macaroni and cheese, Munday the hot-pot—the barman shoveled and clapped the meals to the plates, cracking the spoon against their edges to clear it—and both men sat, jammed together on the wooden bench, balancing their plates on their knees and raising their forks with great care. Alec reminisced about the five-bob lunch at the Uganda hotel, but in each reminder of the place Munday saw a new aspect of the ritual he had invented for himself there, and he wanted to be away from Alec, to return to the black house with Emma and verify his fear. Pehaps he had imagined the panic; much of his Africa seemed imaginary, and distant and ridiculous.

“I’ll tell you who I did see,” said Alec. “It was over in Shepherd’s Bush. I was waiting for a bus by the green. Bloke walked by and I thought to myself, I know him. It was Mills.”

“Ah, Mills,” said Munday. But he was thinking of Alec, in the grayness of Shepherd’s Bush, waiting for a bus—the tea planter with four hundred pickers, who had employed a driver, when few did, for his new Peugeot sedan.

“The television man,” said Alec. “Education for the masses.”

“I remember Mills.”

“He remembered you,” said Alec. “We had a natter, he said to drop in sometime. I said fine, but I doubt that I will. I never liked him. I liked her, though.”

“So did I.”

“I should say you did!” Alec gave Munday a nudge. He narrowed his eyes and said, “He never knew, did he?”

“I hope not. It doesn’t matter. It wasn’t what you’d call an affair. But she meant a lot to me. I wondered what happened to her.”

“Like everyone else,” said Alec. “They’re all here, bleeding to death.”

“Did he say he lived in Shepherd’s Bush?”

“No, I think he said Battersea. He works in Shepherd’s Bush—that’s where the studios are. You thinking of paying him a visit?”

“Not him,” said Munday. “But I’d like to see Claudia.”

“Drinking still makes me randy, too,” said Alec, and he laughed.

“I had thought I might go over to the British Museum. And I was planning to leave a message for a Bwamba chap in Mecklenburg Square. I don’t know,” said Munday, pausing. “If Claudia’s home—” “They’re in the book, and the phone’s over there,” said Alec. “Give her a ring. I’ll get the next round#” He stood up and gave Munday’s shoulder a friendly push. “Get on with it.”

When Munday came back to the bench, Alec said, “I watched you phoning. It reminded me of that night at the hotel—remember?—when Emma was in Kampala and old Mills on safari. ‘Who’s he ringing?’ I wondered—you were so damned secretive! And then I saw your car parked in the Mills’s driveway that Sunday morning.”

“She’s home,” said Munday. “She invited me over for tea.”

“Are you going?”

“I’d like to see her again.”

“I remember that night so well.”

“That was the first time,” said Munday. “There weren’t many others.”

“Mind what you do.” There was pleasure in Alec’s face. “It’s like old times,” he said. “Wish I had Rosie here.”

“I won’t do much,” said Munday. “She said her daughter’s due home from school—little Alice.”

“Jesus, now I remember the story. She saw you in bed with the old lady and said, ‘You’re not my daddy!’ ”

“Where are you off to?” asked Munday quickly.

“Notting Hill Gate for me. Dusky Islander, I expect,” said Alec jauntily. “Some bitch in white garters in an unmade bed in a basement flat to insult my body—you should try it sometime, Alfred old man.” He sighed. “Then I’ll go back to my room in the monkey house and watch television. That’s all I do. I’m getting more like them every day.”

“I’d better be off,” said Munday.

“How are things up-country?” Alec was stabbing his umbrella into the carpet. “Emma her old sketching self?”

“She’s fine, sends you her regards,” said Munday, but he thought, up-country: it was the way Alec had always referred to the Yellow Fever Camp on a Saturday night. But this time they would part in a cold London drizzle, Alec to his bedsitter, Munday to Four Ashes.

Outside the pub Alec held his collar together at his throat and looked at the street and the dripping brown sky. He said, “This fucking city, and none of them know it.”

“You should come down and see us some time,’* said Munday.

“No fear,” said Alec. “But give Emma my love—I still have her picture of my estate. The pluckers. The gum trees. That hill.”

“She’ll be pleased.”

Alec leaned closer, breathing beer; he said with feeling, “Tea’s a lovely crop, Alfred.”

The walked in different directions, but met again by accident a few minutes later near the Leicester Square tube station. Alec was walking up Charing Cross Road. He smilied at Munday and called out, “Kwaheri!”—and people turned—and then stooping in the rain and still gripping his collar he continued on his way, trudging into the raincoated crowd of shoppers.

Munday walked by the house several times, preparing himself to meet her by calling up her face and rehearsing a conversation. He almost went away. His interest in seeing her, encouraged by Alec, had dwindled as soon as Alec had left him; now it had nearly vanished and there was moving him only a youthful muscle of curiosity. In the taxi he had felt a jumping in his stomach, that pleasurable tightness that precedes sex, but he had stopped the taxi on the other side of Chelsea Bridge so that he could cut across the park, and the pleasure left him. He saw two black boys, running through the trees, chasing each other with broom handles, skidding over a landscape where they didn’t belong. Their flapping clothes annoyed him. His feet were wet. He resented his fatigue; the speed of the taxi, the noise and fumes of the city had tired him, he was unused to those assaults on his senses, and already he felt that the trip to London was wasted. His mid-afternoon hangover drugged him like a bad meal. He wanted to lie down somewhere warm and sleep.

It had not been hard for him to find the house. It was prominent, announcing its color in a long terrace of bay-windowed three-story brick houses on a road just off the south side of the park. The road stretched to a lighted corner, where more blacks, whose idleness he instantly resented, lingered under a street lamp. The conversion of the Mills’s house reproached the other gloomy house fronts. The brick had been painted white, there was a yellow window box, and the door was bright yellow; the iron gate was new and so was the brass knocker and the mat on the top step. In the little plot in front there was a square of clipped grass and a small bare tree: on one limb a florist’s tag spun.

He tapped the knocker and waited. He was trembling; his heart worked in troubled thumps—he always heard it when he was nervous, and hearing it increased his nervousness.

The door opened on a woman’s thin face. “Yes?”

“Is Mrs. Mills at home?” Munday spoke sharply to the stranger.

The question bewildered the woman. She said, “What is it you want?” And then she smiled and said, “Alfred?” and flung open the door.

“Claudia,” he said in a weak expression of surprise. He did not dare to look closer. He almost said, Is that you?

He could not hide his embarrassment, his kiss was ungainly, he bumped her chin. He wanted to stare at her, to compare her with his memory, she was so thin and sallow, and her hair was brown. It had been blond. He was disappointed—in her, in himself; was deeply ashamed, a shame so keen he heard himself saying, “I’m sorry—” Then he was moving into the lounge and talking, apologizing for being early, explaining the train he had to catch, complimenting her on the decoration, the bookshelves, the chrome and marble coffee table. She was naming stores, Liberty, Heals, Habitat, as he named objects of furniture. He avoided her eyes and now he was talking about the carpet—it was orange—but his eyes were fixed on the narrow bones showing in her feet. He wished he had not come; he wanted to go.

“And a color television,” he was saying. It was on, a large screen swimming with yellow and blue, and the deep orange face of a talking man. He felt obliged, having made the comment, to watch it. The man was talking very slowly, as if to a child, and tearing a newspaper into strips.

“Not ours,” said Claudia. “It’s on loan. The BBC gives them to all their senior staff.”

“I’ve never seen one before,” said Munday, and at a loss for words he went on watching the program. Now a small-breasted girl was singing a nursery rhyme in a halting way and waltzing foolishly with a stuffed bear.

“Do sit down, Alfred.” Claudia picked up a glass. “Are you sure you want tea or would you like something stronger? I’ve been drinking gin ever since you rang—for courage!”

“Tea’s fine,” said Munday. He sat in a chair which had a spoon-shaped seat. He swiveled awkwardly.

“I was so surprised to hear from you.”

“Really? I thought you might have seen my letter to The Times ”

“We get the Guardian” said Claudia. “Not that I ever read it. That Northern Ireland business is so awful. Have you been back long?”

“A little over a month—we’re in the country. Dorset.”

“Dorset’s lovely,” said Claudia. “I can’t remember the last time I saw you. Was it—?’*

“Years ago. That party,” said Munday. “At Margaret’s.”

“Poor Margaret.”

“Jack’s driving a bus.”

“He deserves to,” said Claudia, pouring herself another gin. “They ruined my theory, you know, breaking up like that in Africa. That ludicrous court case.” “What theory is this? You never told me.”

“About divorces. As an anthropologist you might be interested,” said Claudia. She sipped her gin. “Not very complicated. It’s just that everyone says that marriages go to pieces in the tropics. That’s a myth. Why should they break up there? There’s no housework to do, the kids are off your hands, no worries. It’s like a holiday. I don’t know where these writers get the idea it’s such a great strain on a marriage— that scene at the club where the outraged husband throws his drink into the lover’s face and says, ‘You’ve been seeing my wife.’ That sort of rubbish.” “I’ve seen it happen, but not in those precise words.”

“It never happens! No one cares. Do you remember when we did those Maugham plays? ‘Sybil, have you betrayed me?’ and all that?”

“The Uganda Players,” said Munday.

“What a farce,” said Claudia. “And that pansy director—I forget his name. Those plays made me laugh.

I don’t know why I joined that silly drama group. Emma wasn’t in it, was she?’*

“She had her painting to occupy her,” said Munday. “And we were at the camp.”

“You lived so damned far from town,” said Claudia. She smiled. “I’ll bet she’s not doing any painting here.”

“How do you know?”

“I know. She’s doing housework, going to the launderette, shopping, cooking. What a bore. I know— that’s what / do. That’s my theory—marriages don’t break up when people go to the tropics, they break up here, when they get back. There’s a name for it.” Claudia snapped her fingers.

“Culture shock,” said Munday.

“Right, right—culture shock. There’s none of it in Africa, but there’s masses here.”

“I suppose I’m having a bit of it myself,” said Munday. It slipped out, and he was angry with himself for having revealed it: she might ask why. But she hadn’t heard, she was still talking.

“I’m not saying that Martin and I are thinking of separating. We’re muddling along well enough. But it’s tough sometimes. You’ll see. You haven’t been in England for a long time, Alfred. Marriage is hard here.”

“It’s hard everywhere, let’s face it.”

“No, not in Africa—it’s easy there,” she said. “Everything is easy there, isn’t it?”

“Is it?”

“You know it is!” she said. “But here—it’s part of my theory—every married couple is on the verge of divorce.”

“You don’t say.” He could see she was drunk; he wanted to calm her, and leave.

“You see, marriage is grounds for divorce,” she said. “Marriage as we know it. Young people don’t even think about it any more.”

“So the younger sociologists say,” said Munday.

“But marriage has never been sacred among the Bwamba. They’re always swapping partners. I worked it out once—the divorce rate among the Bwamba is twenty times that of the English. As for adultery— they simply choose a woman and stick a spear in the dirt in front of her hut to show she’s occupied. The husband won’t interrupt.”

“Did you bring your spear with you today?” She laughed coarsely.

Munday said, “I’ve got a train to catch.”

“You and your Africans,” she said. “Didn’t you get sick of them? I’m sick of them. I’m not a racist, I’m just sick of them—seeing them, hearing about them. They’re always on television, and Battersea’s full of them. Why don’t people ever talk about the Chinese? There are more Chinese than there are Africans, and there’s more to talk about.” Claudia had finished her drink. She licked the lemon peel and said, “The Head Prefect at Alice’s school is an African. That’s why they made him Head Prefect.”

“He’s actually a West Indian,” said Alice, entering the room with a tray. She looked at Munday and said hello with a coolness that seemed so calculated he could not reply immediately. He thought: She knows me.

“Just put it down there,” said Claudia.

“You’re a big girl now,” said Munday at last. “Sixteen,” said Claudia. “Though she thinks she’s a few years older.”

“Mummy, please.”

“She hates me,” said Claudia. “It’s a phase.”

Alice was attractive; she wore denim slacks that fit her high buttocks tightly, and her hair was long, in a single rope of braid, with the blondness that had gone out of her mother’s. She poured the tea and brought Munday his cup and a plate with a slice of fruitcake on it. Munday smiled, but she did not respond. She maintained that sceptical, knowing look, which was an adult frown of accusation, worn deliberately, Munday guessed, for her mother’s former lover. It put Munday on his guard, but disturbed him, because it rubbed at the memory of his lust. All the old forgotten feeling he had had for the mother, who inspired nothing in him but a vague pity and shame for the woe in her eyes, came awake in the presence of the pretty daughter, for whom he felt a twinge of desire. And that awakening was enough of a reminder of his lust for the mother to make him uneasy.