The Search (5 page)

“Yes,” said Trevor, “thank you. He knew of my brother. He gave me an address.”

“Is that right?” said Mason, who seemed pleased that Morton had been of use. His arms had much black hair on them and on one was a tattooed blue anchor.

“I'm glad,” he said, and the words sounded genteel and strange.

“Anyway thank you again for all your trouble,” said Trevor who suddenly became very businesslike. “I'd better go and visit that address.”

“Henry of course is a man who will do anything for money,” said Mason. “Did you give him any?”

“I'm afraid I did.”

“You realize of course,” said Mason seriously, “that he might not know him at all. Some of them try to make themselves important by pretending to have information that they don't actually have. A lot of them will say what you expect them to say. They feel that information is power and they will do anything to be the centre of attention. Even kill,” he added in a low voice.

“Kill?”

“Yes. Kill. One of them killed a mate of his last month. This mate of his clicked his teeth once too often so he was hit on the head with a hammer. God knows where the hammer came from. I've seen a lot of violence. I used to be a policeman myself till I landed this job.”

“I have to go there anyway,” said Trevor. “I can't afford not to. By the way, have you heard of a Pole called Sikowski?”

“Sikowski. Can't say that I have. No, the name doesn't ring a bell.”

“Thank you anyway,” said Trevor and left, passing a phone box on his way to the door.

Seven

T
ILL THE TIME
came for him to go to the house where his brother was supposed to be staying (for Morton had suggested five o'clock on the grounds that he thought Harrison wouldn't be home till then from his work) Trevor went into a second-hand bookshop where there was a large number of paperbacks, including crime stories. He studied these, trying to find one that he hadn't read, and as he walked along the shelves, watched by a man who rocked gently in a chair while he read the Racing Page of the
Australian
he tried to assemble in his mind the details he had discovered. In the first place he had been told by two separate people, Douglas and Morton, that his brother had been in Sydney. It seemed plausible to assume that he was still there, though on the other hand it was odd that the Salvation Army could find no trace of him. But he had also to remember that both his informants didn't seem the most trustworthy of people: in fact both might be lying for some mysterious reason of their own. It was all very strange and opaque, as opaque as the dusty window of the shop in which he was at that moment standing.

As he leafed through a book by Ellery Queen — one from the great period which he had already read — it occurred to him that he was himself taking part in a mystery in a manner of speaking. He felt himself at the centre of a devious intrigue which he was not equipped to unravel. And this feeling of helpless perplexity was reinforced when he went into a restaurant for some food, only to find that sitting at the adjoining table was Mrs Tennant whom at first he didn't recognize. She was sitting with another lady, as ample as herself, both of them wearing expensive grey blouses and necklaces, and when the two had finished their meal and were leaving Mrs Tennant came over to him and said, clasping his hands in hers,

“Don't worry, don't worry, we're working on it.” He was astounded that out of a city of three million inhabitants she was the one who was sitting at the table next to him, and his feeling of being in a web intensified. He began to think of Douglas again. Was he in fact playing some deep game of his own, unstable and mocking as he had appeared? Was it even possible that he and Morton knew each other? But he couldn't think why Douglas should be deliberately deceiving him. Hadn't he after all taken the trouble to phone him? Shouldn't he feel more grateful to him than he actually did? But he felt resentful that Douglas should have thrust the fate of his brother so abruptly on him.

On the other hand it might just be that the man had an unfortunate personality, one of the ones who had suffered like Morton, who had sat with his blue pointed nose studying him so intently. Perhaps Morton was inventing the story about his brother. But he couldn't afford to assume that, he must investigate.

When he had eaten his food he walked in the direction Morton had told him. The condition of the houses deteriorated as he made his way along: it seemed to him that he was in an area which looked as derelict and abandoned as parts of Glasgow, before the rebuilding had started. He met a shoeless woman staggering along the street muttering to herself and later passed a spastic in a wheelchair who was holding out his hands for donations, a living advertisement for the cause which he in his helplessness represented. While he held the tin out his head and hands trembled uncontrollably. Trevor put a dollar in the tin and couldn't make out whether the movement of the head was a nervous tic or a nod of thanks. On the other side of the pavement he saw a pair of boys running past in ragged clothes. But these would only be isolated examples of deprivation, he thought, to be expected in a city of this size.

At last he found the house whose address Morton had given him, and this with much difficulty, for its number didn't appear in the regular order of street numbers but was in a small lane round a corner. The evening was very sultry and he felt that there was lightning and thunder imminent as on the night when he had travelled through Canberra in a taxi and had seen flashes of ghostly light on the horizon. He mopped his brow two or three times with his handkerchief and then rang the doorbell which was sunk in the stone at the side of an unpainted and scarred door. No one appeared and as he stood there in the silence looking around him it seemed to him suddenly that he was very vulnerable and open to attack. After a while when there was still no answer he went round to a window and could see through it a bare room in which there was only an old television set and a sink full of unwashed dishes. He went back to the door and rang the bell again and again there was no answer. Trembling, he pushed the door and it opened creakingly.

“Norman,” he whispered from the dark hall, but there was no answer, and the house seemed both deserted and threatening. He entered a bedroom whose bare floorboards squeaked. A clock ticked on a wall above him, but of human presence there was no sign. There were no carpets on any of the floors, no pictures on the walls. On the kitchen table he found a blue ashtray crammed with cigarette ends. He felt a frightened intruder as he stood uncertainly in what appeared to be the living room, though it too was bare. From the dark tiny bathroom next door he heard the insistent monotonous dripping of water from a tap. Morton had clearly deceived him: either that or the owner had not returned, if he was indeed working. There was no sign of his brother's presence in the house at all.

Feeling more and more oppressed by a sense of danger he turned away from the living room and made for the main door. He tried to open it but couldn't. He tugged and tugged but couldn't move it. Was his mind playing tricks on him? On the other hand he could remember perfectly well leaving the door unlocked and in any case if it had been locked he wouldn't have been able to get into the house without a key. So there must be someone else with him in that house at that very moment, perhaps his brother, enraged and revengeful, watching him, stalking him. He waited, feeling his heart beat heavily and quickly. And then in the silence he heard the faint, almost inaudible squeak of a floorboard. He
turned towards the window in panic. Perhaps he should smash a pane and get out that way, but his respect for property wouldn't allow him to do so.

He heard the squeak of the floorboard again. There definitely was someone in the house. He looked frantically around him for a weapon for he now knew with complete certainty that whoever was in the house was his enemy. Even if it was his brother, he was his enemy, too. But he could find no weapon anywhere, for the rooms were bare. And all the time he sensed a being stalking him, taking its time, patient and mocking, and yet in a curious way relentless.

“Who are you?” he shouted and his voice emerged as a thin, querulous scream.

“Who are you? I know there is someone there.”

But there was no answer. Was it perhaps Morton who had followed him? Or was it his brother or the owner of the house? Or perhaps Douglas. He felt hostility in the air of the house, a scornful, insouciant ruthlessness as of someone waiting.

Again he shouted and again there was no answer, except for the deliberate squeak of a board. He knew that he was being tantalized, deliberately taunted.

Helplessly he stood in the living room. On the wall in front of him was a big mirror flecked with stains and dust. He stared intently at the reflection of his own face in the fading light. It looked gaunt and very frightened. The creaking had now stopped and there was a definite sense of approaching menace as if whoever it was who had been causing the creaking had tired of the foreplay. Fatefully, with a sort of heavy acceptance, he turned round and there was the man standing in the doorway smiling at him and then drifting towards him slowly as if in a ballet. Then Trevor was hit by a blow which felled him to the ground. Before he lost consciousness he felt hands scurrying about him, searching for his wallet, and knew that his money was gone.

Eight

W
HEN HE WOKE
up, the sun shining brightly in his eyes, he couldn't at first remember what had happened to him. He was staring up at what appeared to be a piece of statuary, alabaster legs, alabaster wings flowering from an alabaster body, an alabaster bow in the hand. There was grass under him and he could hear from somewhere the noise of water. He stared hopelessly up at the clouds that passed across the sky. He wanted not to get up, feeling that if he did so he would face a disaster so complete that he might not be able to survive it. And yet he must get up, he mustn't lie there. He must stand up and face whatever had happened to him. Nevertheless he closed his eyes briefly against the pain in his head, and still with his eyes closed touched the back of his head with his hand. He felt a crust there as if it were dry blood and when he removed his hand and looked at it there were small red flakes on it. Opening his eyes slowly again against the brightness of the sun, he levered himself from the ground and saw that he was beside a fountain and that the alabaster figure that he had seen earlier was a Cupid with a drawn bow, its hollow eyes staring upward, its body childlike and plump. At the same time he felt such a dreadful thirst that he began to drink greedily from the fountain while at the same time splashing water on his face and head. I must have been here all night, he thought; they, or he, must have taken me here and dumped me. He supposed that there must have been two people, not one: for all he knew one of them might have been his own brother. He passed his hand across his face and felt the stubble that had grown during his period of unconsciousness.

And then as he swayed by the fountain it came to him with a frightening shock that his wallet was gone. Very carefully and as if willing its reappearance he put his hand inside his breast pocket. The wallet wasn't there.

He stood there sweating profusely in the heat of the foreign sun trying to reassemble himself as if he were a piece of broken machinery. He was in Sydney and he had no money. What was he going to do? Could he sneak back to the hotel and take out his case without being seen? But then he had no money to pay his fare back to Canberra and couldn't find his return ticket which must also have been in his wallet. He tried his other pockets frantically but he could find nothing, he had been comprehensively robbed. Even his watch was gone from his wrist leaving a white band on the flesh, and he didn't even know what the time was. He felt naked and trembling and panicky in the day. What if he couldn't get back to Canberra again, what if he had to stay in Sydney for the rest of his life? Who would lend him the money to return home (for he thought of Canberra as home)? Could he possibly ask the man in the hotel to phone on his behalf to Canberra? But then he didn't know the people in the bank very well nor did he know the professor well enough to ask him for money. And what would the latter think of his grimy, surrealistic story?

So this was what it was like to be destitute in a world that didn't owe one a living, that was in the end merciless and glaring and indifferent. So this was what it was like to be totally on one's own.

He felt in his breast pocket again as if it were possible that he had made a mistake, that his wallet was there after all, but there was no doubt about it, it had irretrievably gone. He didn't even feel anger against those who had robbed him, it was as if from the moment that he had left Canberra this state of destitution had been predetermined.

The world was immense and pitiless around him and even now his attitude towards the people he saw walking down the street had changed; they seemed to him to belong to a world different from his own. Nevertheless he couldn't stand there all day, he must act. If he couldn't do something soon he might remain passively there forever. Money, that was what he needed. Thank God he had been careful enough to leave his passport in his case in his room in Canberra: at least he hadn't lost that. He looked down at his arms which were swollen and red with raw weals and then at his trousers which had lost their crease and looked rumpled. One of the worst things that had happened was the disappearance of his watch: without it he felt naked and disoriented. He stared down at the pale band which its removal had left on his arm: it was like the mark you saw when you lifted a stone and peered underneath it.

Still slightly unsteady on his feet, he left the fountain and began to walk away from the park and it was as if he was leaving behind him a refuge. People walked up and down the street staring straight ahead of them. He felt that he must appear stripped and dispossessed, but no one took the slightest notice of him. Ahead of him he could see the door of his hotel but he didn't want to go through it. He tried to think if there was any money in his case and then remembered that there wasn't. Why had he been such a fool as to carry so much money on his person? Or why hadn't he converted his money into travellers' cheques? But it was too late now.

And then he stopped and considered. An idea came to him. Would it not be the best thing to go to the Salvation Army office and see that woman Mrs Tennant and ask for a loan till he got back to Canberra? Alternatively he might go to the police and report his loss. But some instinct made him decide against that. If he went to the police they might make him stay in Sydney while they questioned him. He simply wished to get out of Sydney and go back to his own room in the college: his mind ached with the desire to do so. He thought of Canberra and not Glasgow as his home.

As he made his way towards the Salvation Army offices, he no longer worried about his brother: his more immediate concern was to save his own skin. Had he not done enough? What more could be expected of him? Anyway he no longer believed that his brother was alive and if he was he couldn't be in any worse condition than he was himself. Thinking these thoughts he found himself at his destination. He stood in front of the window of a shop and tried to straighten his tie. Then very slowly he climbed the stairs to the office.

Mrs Tennant was there, matronly, composed and calm.

“Mr Grierson,” she said in surprise. “I'm sorry but we don't have any more news.”

He stared at her, at first unable to speak. Then he said, speaking very carefully, for he found that his voice was actually trembling.

“I came to ask you for money.”

He tried to smile in a civilized manner as if he was making a joke but the muscles of his face were stiff.

“I went to a Home that Douglas told me about and when I was in a house to which I was directed by an inmate I was hit over the head. My wallet was stolen, all the money I had. Can you give me some money to take me back to Canberra? I would repay you, naturally.”

“What?” she said. “You were beaten up. You must inform the police at once.”

“No,” he said, “I don't wish to do that. All I want is to get back to Canberra. I'm tired of all this. I don't know what's been happening to me since I came to Sydney.”

“I think first of all you should have a cup of tea,” she said, briskly efficient. “I'll ring.” She did so and when a young girl came into the office she asked if she could bring some hot sweet tea through.

“Now tell me what happened,” she said, when the girl had gone.

“I went along to that Home,” said Trevor. “I met a man there and he told me that he knew my brother. He sent me along to another house.”

“Have you got the address?”

He put his hand into his pocket without thinking and then recollecting what had happened to him said, “How stupid of me. I'm afraid I haven't, I had it on a piece of paper in my pocket. I certainly don't want to go back there.”

“I think you should report this to the police. Shall I do it?”

“No I won't bother. I still have my passport and my air ticket back to Glasgow. I don't want to stay here in Sydney. I want to go back to Canberra.” The image of his brother which had once shimmered like a mirage in a desert had now faded from his mind.

“Are you feeling all right?”

“Yes, I'm feeling all right. Just a little pain in my head but it will go away. I'm angry at my own stupidity. I shouldn't have listened to that man, who told me about my brother. Can you give me enough money to pay my bus fare back to Canberra? That's all I need. Of course it would only be a loan.”

“Of course I can loan you the money,” she said.

“I shall send it back,” Trevor insisted. “I shall definitely send it back. If you will give me the address of this office. I've got money in the bank in Canberra. You've been very good to me.”

She handed him 30 dollars and a card with the address.

“That should be enough,” she said. “But what about meals?”

“I don't want a meal,” he said. “All I want is enough money to pay for the bus. I shall stay in the hotel till near the time the bus leaves.”

He drank the sweet tea which the young girl had brought in. The panic and the fear were beginning slowly to dissipate.

“For a moment there,” he told Mrs Tennant, “I felt what it must be like to be alone in the world. Do you understand?” She nodded wordlessly, but it was as if she didn't really understand, and he had a compulsion to speak.

“It was as if there was no one in the world but me, and I saw everything clearly and it was all hostile.” It occurred to him that if she really understood what he was trying to say she wouldn't be able to do the job that she was doing.

“I could have stopped a stranger in the street and asked him for money,” he said, hardly believing his own words but knowing that they were true.

“I understand,” said Mrs Tennant, out of her massive calm, “now drink your tea.”

“I felt surrounded by enemies,” Trevor insisted, “a blankness came over me. I can't tell you what it was like.” He stared down at his unpolished shoes.

“What should I do with the dollars?” he asked helplessly. “I might be attacked again.”

“I don't think that will happen,” she said briskly. “But if you like I could send someone to collect your ticket.”

“No, no, that won't be necessary. It's daylight now. I shouldn't think they'll attack me in daylight on a busy street.”

“I still think you should phone the police.”

“And be kept in Sydney for days? No. In any case, I don't have any witnesses to what happened. It was a man called Morton from that Home who sent me to the house where I was attacked: he said that my brother lived there. I don't know whether he lived there or not. I don't know where he is. I'm sure now that he's dead. I feel it.”

“I don't think he is,” said Mrs Tennant quickly. “Someone tried to take advantage of you, that's all. They realized you were a stranger in the city. It has nothing at all to do with your brother.”

“Well, I had better not keep you any longer,” said Trevor. “You have a great deal to do.” And indeed she was beginning to look rather impatient and he sensed that her hand was itching to use the phone, to continue her practical pursuits. And even as he had finished speaking the phone rang. She picked it up and while she was speaking into it he
got to his feet and left the room, waving to her as he went out the door. He descended the stairs keeping his hand in the pocket where the dollars were. Should he keep them in his back pocket or in one of his side pockets? The question troubled him as he made his way along to the hotel.

He stood for a while facing its blank, scarred door. He didn't want to go in. He thought of the rickety lift, the negro he had glimpsed momentarily in the corridor. And then he suddenly remembered that his bill had already been paid. Why hadn't he remembered before? All he had to do was go to his room, remove his case and make his way towards the bus station. He would stay there all day if necessary till a bus left: he wouldn't stay in the hotel after all. The idea of finally leaving the hotel was so joyful that he decided that he would not take the lift but descend by the stairs instead. And then as he reached his room he suddenly realized that the key, which he had had in his pocket, was also gone. He stood outside, almost weeping with rage and frustration and feeling pity for himself. He would have to go to see the owner or manager whose office was on the sixth floor, and he would have to take that lift again — that creaking, superannuated coffin — and explain that he had lost his key.

As he walked along the corridor towards the lift he saw a boy and girl come out of a room hand in hand. In the light of the day they appeared harmless enough, laughing and chattering, their faces turned radiantly towards each other. Why, then, had he thought that this hotel was dangerous and evil?

When he reached the sixth floor he found the swarthy-faced man he had met before, sitting behind his desk as previously.

“I'm sorry,” said Trevor hesitantly. “I'm afraid I've lost my key. I don't know what happened to it, and now I've locked myself out.”

“Oh, that's all right,” said the man, “no worries.” It happens all the time. I'll come down with you.” They took the lift down together, Trevor not speaking.

“You see, I have a master key,” said the man.

They walked along the corridor side by side and when they reached Trevor's room the man opened it for him.

“There you are,” he said. “I'll get another key made. You're not leaving for another four days, are you?”

“No,” said Trevor, guilty at having to lie.

“Just pull the door behind you,” said the man. “I'll get another key made for you. When will you be back in again?”

“Oh, about nine or ten,” said Trevor quickly. “I might go to the cinema or the theatre. Thank you very much. It's very good of you.”

He felt he ought to give the man a tip but at the same time he didn't know how much money he could afford, and would need for the bus. So he stood there awkwardly outside the door till the man had gone away. After all he had been kind, and it might have been a mosquito, not fleas, which had made his arms come out in red weals. He felt he ought to apologize to the man but by the time he had thought of doing so the lift was climbing creakily towards the sixth floor. If he had had arrived earlier on the first night he might not have had such a bad impression of the hotel.