Harry Ufford woke in his armchair and removed from his lap his faithful cat, Rover. ‘Goo and sit on your own self,’ he complained.
An open bottle of whisky and a smeary tumbler were on the table beside him, and he poured himself a large drink and sipped it. The cuckoo-clock showed a quarter to nine. Drinking, he considered the room which he had now got exactly as he wanted it, the frame for his middle years.
It was a place full of ships and horses: of model ships in and out of bottles, china Suffolk Punches, and many horse-brasses. Over the fireplace, with its dying fire of coal and driftwood, hung a huge print of Constable’s Leaping Horse, faced on the other side of the narrow room by Turner’s Fighting Temeraire. Behind the glass of a bow-bellied cabinet were other knick-knacks, long in the gathering, also bearing on Suffolk or the sea.
It was a small room in a very small house, in a street which had preserved its mediæval outline and ran towards the place where the landward gate had once opened in the borough’s walls. But Harry Ufford did not feel the narrowness. He had lived in a caravan, on ships and fishing-boats, and for an early year or two in a Borstal. What he felt was warmth and freedom, the privacy of his own special place, the comforting profusion of all those things, so lovingly chosen, which he had carried home to mark his patch. Harry Ufford, at forty-seven, drinking whisky he could pay for and smoking a cigarette of Dutch tobacco, from his usual matey source of supply, was at home like a cockle in the mud.
But the cuckoo would soon be out; it was near nine on a Saturday night. He glanced at the television set, at the bucket of coals by the dying fire, and, as he set down his empty glass on it, at the vivid paperback about sensational true murders. He was a devotee of real-life murder. But the forms of his society called him out once a week; and dutifully he heaved his large frame from the chair, stood for a moment in thought before the fire, then reached out a tattooed arm to a doorknob, and so made his way upstairs.
In his brand-new bathroom, the pride of his heart, he washed and shaved. In a brand-new mirror he faced his face. Broad-boned, still lean, a little flushed. He bent nearer to inspect himself, and with a fingertip touched a spot on the side of his nose, made up of little veins. ‘Hot cobwebs, boy,’ he warned himself. He ran his fingers, tattooed L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E, through his black hair. It was thick and long, with no more than a spike or two of grey.
On his bed a cocoon of army-surplus blankets still kept the shape of him. He had no time for sheets, was not used to them. He changed his underclothes, and carefully fetched from the wardrobe some of his more formal gear. He put on blue Levis, a fisherman’s jersey, a short black leather jacket. Over seaman’s socks he pulled leather boots the colour of Ovaltine, with rather high heels. Then he paused to check on himself in a long mirror, while attaching his front-door key to a belt-loop.
He was in order. He wore the uniform of an Old Tornwich Saturday night.
Level with his eye hung a photograph of his father, a very good one, taken by somebody famous in that line. It had appeared in a book, with the caption: ‘Suffolk Fisherman’. A face lined and spare as driftwood, prickly with a few days of white stubble, the bright eyes among the weather-lines cautious, guarded, yet kind.
‘You weren’t such a bad old boy,’ said Harry Ufford, out of the wisdom of his middle years. ‘Sorry.’
As Harry was coming down Red Lion Street he heard, from the mist, a sort of hoarse shout, muffled, neither male nor female. Then plimsolled feet were running towards him, and a short body hit him amidships.
‘Watch where you’re gooin, boy,’ Harry said, irritably. ‘Whass that you, Killer?’
Killer was a twelve-year-old boy, and looked very tough. But his face, in the mist-muted light of a streetlamp, was not self-confident.
‘Sorry, Harry,’ he muttered, in an unsteady treble. ‘Harry—’
‘Did you sing out just now?’ Harry asked. ‘I thought I hear someone yell.’
‘It was me,’ the boy admitted, reluctantly. ‘I seen something. I seen—I dunno. A thing.’
‘What you on about, boy?’ Harry demanded. ‘What kind of a thing? A hooman thing?’
‘Yeh,’ Killer said, ‘but—I dunno. I weren’t expectin it, it give me a turn, that did. I was comin down the street, from this way, and I was goin to go down that passage, on the left. Then this—this person come out of the other passage, on the right, and stop for a moment in the middle of the street and look at me, and then go away down the other passage where I was goin.’
‘Whass so special, then,’ Harry asked, ‘about this person?’
‘I’ll tell you this,’ said the child, more bravely, ‘that was something ugly. A loony, I reckon. With an anorak with the hood pulled up, and underneath this mask, the worst I ever seen. And hands with hair on, and claws.’
‘Why, I sin hands like that,’ Harry said. ‘You buy them in a joke-shop. George Butt buy one, about a thousand years ago, for makin hand-signals from his lorry.’
‘I int daft, Harry,’ said Killer, with returning spirit. ‘I knoo that. What I mean is, that person is mad. Out of his tree. Thass something I could feel, kind of.’
Harry stood reflecting, thumbs in his wide leather belt. ‘I’ll tell you what, boy,’ he said, ‘thass a joke that’ll make sense to someone. There’s four pubs he could have been headin for, gooin that way. In one of them all his mates are peein themselves just now. Or else he’s disappointed. In this life, dear boy, practical jokes are mostly let-downs.’
‘Are you goin by mine, Harry?’ the boy asked.
‘I weren’t, but I shall,’ said the broad protective man. ‘I kind of envy you your imagination, young Killer. There int all that much drama in Old Tornwich. Yeh, I shall see you hoom.’
‘There could be,’ the boy said, defensively. ‘Dramas, I mean—bad things. There’s that many little passages and empty houses and dark yards and places where the street-lamps don’t reach. What if there was someone mad among us here, in this fog?’
‘Fog, he call it. This int no fog, boy.’
‘All right, Harry,’ said Killer, restored to normal, ‘you know your way about. I always stick up for you when they call you a dozy prat.’
‘I think you’re lookin for a thick ear, doughnut.’
Companionably they turned into the passage, Harry’s boots ringing on its flags. The stillness of the little town was stiller there, among high narrow buildings. The only light was from lamplit mist in the streets at either end. As they passed, Harry looked carefully into two pitchdark doorways belonging to empty houses. ‘Now you got me started,’ he confessed.
In the next street they stopped outside a small Georgian house. ‘You carry a key, boy?’ Harry asked.
The child shook his head, and banged loudly with a shining brass knocker in the shape of a dolphin.
‘Well, I shan’t wait,’ said Harry. The reason bein, I have a dark suspicion your mam fancy me.’
‘No,’ said Killer, ‘no, thass me dad what fancy you.’
‘I hope you have nightmares,’ Harry said, ‘you percocious brat. See you.’
He walked on down the street. Through the mist the lights of the big ferry, the St Felix, shone bright and blurred. He stopped on the quayside to look at her.
‘Great days,’ he said to himself. ‘Great mates, great fights, great piss-ups.’
He turned and walked on, beside the mist-breathing water, towards the sign of the Speedwell, dimly shining at the far end of the quay.
Inside Old Tornwich Speedwell, wearers of the Saturday night uniform were out in strength. Somebody’s small dog was wandering, bewildered, through thickets of blue denim legs. Here and there the more formal uniform of a pilot added the touch of class which the Speedwell’s landlady was always pleased to see.
‘You don’t get in much lately,’ Frank De Vere said, drinking with Harry at the bar. The sound of his voice caught the ear of retired Commander Pryke, an irritable tippler, who turned to his neighbour and muttered in disgust: ‘De Vere. Bog Irish by origin, and he’s a De Vere.’
‘Bog Norman-Irish, perhaps,’ Paul Ramsey suggested peaceably, and puffed at his pipe. He and the Commander sat a little apart at a table by a window. Outside, the masts of a fishing-boat swayed unsettlingly in the mist.
‘It come to me on my birthday,’ Harry was saying, ‘that my wild days was over. I said to myself, I say: Once a week is enough, boy, just to keep up the social intercourse, like. Well, I mean, at my time of life what you’re fittest for is watchin the telly.’
‘And I suppose you never drink indoors,’ Frank De Vere insinuated. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t be half-cut at the moment?’
When scenting an offence Harry’s face took on an odd expression, mild yet grim. Not moving his head, he said: ‘Psychologically speakin, young Frank, you’re a sort of a Peepin Tom. What the Frogs call a voiture.’
‘Voyeur, you tool,’ Frank murmured.
‘Is that it? Where did I get voiture from, then?’
‘Off the car-deck on the Felix, I should imagine.’
‘Oh my mind, my mind,’ Harry groaned, running a hand through his hair. ‘Forty-seven, and my mind’s in the state of an old Brillopad. Just you remember what I always tell you: this Abbot Ale causes brain damage.’
Frank emptied his pint nonetheless. ‘No Dave tonight,’ he said. ‘Courting, I think.’
‘Courtin?’ Harry’s glance was sceptical.
‘Why not?’
‘He never shew much interest before. Another thing about him: seem to me he have a surprisin amount of money for a young fella on the dole.’
‘All right, then,’ Frank said, ‘he’s out robbing a bank. You senile fucking voiture.’
Harry looked at him suddenly, really looking, with his jaw set. ‘I think you’re a bit of a nasty bugger,’ he said, without heat. ‘Sometimes I don’t enjoy listenin to you.’
‘Joke, mate,’ Frank explained, uncomfortably. ‘Here, drink that up, I’m waiting.’
While Frank hovered, trying to catch a barmaid’s eye, Harry studied his own thick fingers drumming on a drip-mat on the bar. L-O-V-E; H-A-T-E. Those fists had got him into trouble in earlier days; the optimism and easy affectionateness of his nature turning to violence when he felt affronted. Now he was weighing up the case of Frank De Vere.
He could think of many favours which he had done for Frank, and for his withdrawn, unhappy wife. Favours, he saw on reflection, which he had rather thrust upon them; but that was his way, and people were used to him. If he had ever given the matter a thought, he would have counted Frank among his closer friends. But there was a matter of thirteen years between their ages, and it had dawned on him, after that sudden flash of malice, that this long pub-companionship was like the companionship of fellow-commuters, quite empty. If Frank sought him out, as in a passive way he did, it was because Frank was not liked. So (reasoned Harry) he get Muggins for his mate; soft-touch Harry, Harry the swede, that read a lot of books but get mixed up over the long words. Senile fuckin Harry.
If Frank had a real friend, though that would be putting it strongly, it must be young Dave Stutton. Yet Harry had gathered from the air once or twice that they did not much like one another. So what thrust them into each other’s company so often must be business, after a fashion.
A pint-pot was placed between his hands, and he lifted it and said: ‘Cheers.’ He smiled his open country-boy’s smile, not in hypocrisy, but because that was his way of dealing with friction, for a while. He did sincerely think the best of people, till the moment when something demanded to be done.
Suddenly the mug’s rim clicked against his teeth as he started. Someone had goosed him.
He swung round. ‘Why, you naughty old lady, Ena.’
A bouncy little woman, bosomed like a bullfinch, stood beaming up at him. Old Tornwich knew her as Eddystone Ena: former ship’s stewardess, former barmaid, and for many years the solitary tenant of an urban lighthouse.
As she opened her mouth to speak the jukebox, now surrounded by a knot of teenagers just come in, broke its silence with a scream, and he bent down to her. ‘Hullo, stranger,’ she yelled in his ear. ‘Give us a kiss.’
He embraced her small plumpness, and kissed her on each cheek. ‘Oh, isn’t he a big strong fella,’ she cried to Frank De Vere, who was looking down on the scene with his usual sardonic expression, eyes glacier-blue in his pockmarked face.
‘Let me sit you on the bar,’ Harry offered, ‘where we can see you.’
‘You put me down, Harry Ufford!’ chortled Ena, enjoying herself. ‘No, I can’t stay, I was on my way round to speak to Doris when I saw you. It’s the first time for yonks. When a man cuts down on his beer he just seems to vanish. You look very well, Harry. Younger, thinner in the face.’
Harry’s guileless vanity responded; he grinned.
‘Anyway,’ Ena rattled on, ‘you must come and see me some day at the lighthouse. We’re neighbours, after all.’
‘Will do,’ Harry said. ‘Thass a promise. But anyway, Ena, see you again before closin time, I hope.’
She passed, and he turned back to Frank, his equivocal mate. ‘Thass a great little old gal,’ he said. ‘War widow, you know. She never had things easy, but always bright as a button.’
‘You’ve been into her lighthouse, have you?’ Frank asked.
‘Oh, yeh, two or three times. She keep that quite nice. All her gear is shabby, like, but thass homely.’
‘I and Dave have this fantasy,’ Frank said, ‘of going and knocking on her door. It would be a real Goon Show scene, we reckon. We’d hear her feet coming down a hundred and twelve stairs, then the door would creak open, horror-film stuff, and we’d say: “Is Fred in?” “Fred don’t live here,” she’d say, and the door would slam, and a hundred and twelve footsteps would go away again, into the sky.’
‘I can see how that would appeal to you and Dave,’ Harry said, ‘gettin a woman with sixty-one-year-old legs down all them stairs. But she don’t live in the light-room, as that happen. I doubt if she ever goo up there.’
‘I’d like to see inside that place,’ mused Frank.
‘Well, play your cards right, boy, and you might get an invitation to tea. But if I was you I should prepare myself for it by thinkin of her in a more friendly spirit. I expect you noticed that you dint get an invitation just now.’
‘Right,’ Frank said, gazing impassively into his beer.
Behind Harry’s back retired Commander Pryke, lurching a little in passing, bumped into him. He wandered on with a courtly mutter, and went out by the door on to the quayside. Turning at the interruption, Harry saw Paul Ramsey looking at him from his table, and brightened. ‘There’s young Paul,’ he told Frank; ‘I got something to say to him.’
He took his drink and went over to sit himself in the Commander’s vacated chair, considering the bearded face opposite with benevolence. ‘Well, young man?’
The beard on the young man’s face produced a not uncommon effect, the line of the moustache making Paul Ramsey seem melancholy and resigned.
‘Well what, Harry?’
‘Well, whass that you’re smokin in that pipe? That smell to me like King Henry the Eighth’s bedsocks.’
‘It’s what I can afford,’ Paul said. ‘Unlike you, I pay duty on what I smoke.’
‘Well, less not goo into that. There’s some old customs in this place that a boy of your class and education don’t want to know about.’
‘You’re fairly right,’ Paul said. ‘Bourgeois, we Ramseys are. If a policeman knocked on my door, I’d never feel easy with the neighbours again.’
Outside, the mist was thickening, and the bobbing, gyrating masts had become hard to see.
‘Have you had a right rave-up with Captain Bligh?’
‘He was okay,’ Paul said. ‘A touch of pepper when he noticed Frank De Vere. He objects to his surname—thinks it’s far too good for him.’
‘So that is. De Veres was great people in these parts once. The cream.’
‘I could tell the Commander,’ Paul said, ‘something funny about his own name. But he probably knows it.’
‘Pryke?’ Harry pondered. ‘Whass funny about Pryke?’
‘A few years ago,’ Paul said, ‘I was going through some parish registers for a paper I was writing. In one village I found two families that kept intermarrying. Their names were Prick and Balls.’
‘Oh, schoolmaster!’ Harry exclaimed. ‘Goo and wash your mouth out, boy.’
‘It’s gospel truth. The village was Boxford. In mid-Victorian times one family of Pricks started spelling their name “Pryke”, and by the end of the century they’d all done the same. Now, if you look in the telephone book, you’ll find a lot of Prykes, but the Pricks don’t dare raise their heads.’
‘I don’t think,’ Harry said, ‘that your interests make you a very suitable person to have charge of the minds of our children.’
Paul looked surprised. ‘You haven’t any children—have you, Harry?’
‘That was just a way of speakin,’ Harry said. ‘But I think I have. I might have. One. From before I was married, thass why I int sure.’
‘You were married?’
‘Well—not for long. The divorce went on for years, the marriage dint. But before that there was a gal what had a son I think was mine. I like to think he’s mine. There’s his name,’ Harry said, pushing up his sleeve. Tattooed on his forearm was a red rose with a label across the stem saying PAUL. ‘Thass why I like that name,’ Harry confided.
Paul stared at the tattoo. ‘You’re full of surprises, Harry,’ he said. ‘What if it’s me? Perhaps I was left on the doorstep of the bourgeois Ramseys.’
‘Could be, for all I know,’ Harry said. ‘I never sin him. She wouldn’t let me. He’d be about twenty-five now.’
‘Not me, then. I’m thirty-one.’
‘Are you? Blokes with beards, you just can’t tell.’
He looked at the beard with such candid affection that the younger man sheepishly smiled at him.
‘Do you know what I think about your face?’ Harry asked. ‘I think if I met you in the middle of the Go-By Desert, I should say: “Scoose me, boy, int you a Morris-dancer?”’
Paul spluttered into his beer. ‘If that had come from any other man,’ he said, ‘I’d call him a bitch.’
Harry merely beamed at him, and shook his head. After a pull at his pint he asked, grave now: ‘Are you comfortable in that old house of yours?’
‘All right, thanks,’ Paul said, sounding cagey.
‘Thass something big. Draughty, I should think. Draughty as arseholes.’
‘It’s not too bad. Of course, it’s not—we were going to take years to get it civilized. That’s rather come to a stop.’
‘Thass sad. Still, that happen.’
‘I get the impression,’ Paul said, ‘that it’s happened a lot in Old Tornwich. I’ve never seen so many deserted husbands and lifelong bachelors. I ask myself whether all these little pubs are cause or effect.’
‘I think thass the sea,’ Harry said. ‘Seamen’s marriages are often a bit dodgy, like.’
‘I put so much into that old wreck of a house,’ Paul said, and frowned down at a beermat which he was twisting between his fingers. ‘I thought about it all the time. I suppose I thought that we both thought that was the most important thing about us: that one day we’d sit in our Georgian house that I’d bought for a song and entertain our slightly Bohemian, mostly schoolteaching friends. When she was in the process of being swept off her feet by a real Bohemian, I didn’t even notice.’
‘She might come back, mightn’t she?’
‘No,’ Paul said. ‘I don’t think that affair is likely to last, but she won’t move backwards now.’
‘Well, listen, Paul—’
Paul’s eyes, looking up at him, were grey-blue and rather blank, or guarded. ‘What?’
‘Well, I mean to say, don’t be lonely, you know—’
‘No, I’m not going to be. I think Greg is probably coming to live here for a while.’
‘Greg? Oh, the little brother. The stoodent.’
‘Not a student now. Another unemployable Ph.D.’
‘Whass that—Ph.D?’
‘Doctor of Philosophy.’
‘Ah, you’re pullin my pisser,’ Harry exclaimed. ‘That skinny scruff with the guitar, you call him doctor?’
‘I call him Skinny Scruff,’ Paul said. ‘So can you.’
‘Well, they’re rum places, these universities,’ said Harry. ‘But thass nice for you. I don’t see that much of my own brothers, but we’re pals when we meet. I should say for myself that I’m quite good at bein a brother.’
‘I expect you are, Harry,’ Paul said, with a straight face. ‘If I met you in the Gobi Desert, that’s what I’d guess about you.’
‘Now you are pullin it,’ Harry detected.
The big room, created not many years before from small ones which had been secretive and snug, was crowded and smoky by now, and conversations from many directions mingled in a throbbing hum like a ship’s engine. The small dog was again navigating the legs with a lost look. ‘Why,’ said Harry, sitting with spraddled legs in his captain’s chair and reviewing his fellow-citizens like a fleet, ‘I believe thass Ena’s dog, that.’
‘You know everything,’ Paul said. ‘That reminds me: could you give Greg and me some advice about a boat?’
‘To buy, you mean? Well, I know something, not a lot. But I can tell you who not to buy boats from. The hooman element, thass where I can always be a help.’
‘Harry—what do you make of Frank?’
‘Why, does he say he have a boat to sell? That can’t be true.’
‘No, nothing to do with boats. It’s just that you put me in mind of people who offer to flog you things.’
Harry considered. ‘I don’t know all that much about him. We was both on the Hamburg once—we overlap by a foo months. And he stayed in my top room for a while, part-time, like. But I dint hardly know him then, and I don’t think I do now, not to say know. When he get married, he come ashore and start this sort of handyman business: carpenterin and house-paintin and that. What are you tryin to find out? Do you know something against him?’
‘No,’ Paul said, doubtfully: and then: ‘Better drop it. He saw me looking at him. He’s coming over.’
Harry twisted in his chair and looked over his shoulder at Frank approaching. ‘Come to join us, mate?’
‘No, I’m off,’ Frank said. ‘I just remembered something. You’re invited to a party, at Dave’s.’
‘At Dave’s?’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know where Dave live.’
‘It’s twenty-three High Street,’ Frank said. ‘A bit after eleven. Bring a bird, if you know one, and enough to drink for yourselves.’
‘Well, I might,’ Harry said. ‘Shall I ask Ena? She always like a party, but I don’t think a party of Dave’s would be up her street.’
‘Bring her,’ Frank said, beginning to drift away. ‘You’re invited too,’ he added to Paul, and then pushed his way through the crowd to the door.
‘Well,’ Harry said to Paul, ‘shall you come?’
‘I don’t think so. If Ena goes, I might.’
‘I know whass in Dave’s mind,’ Harry said, ‘invitin us Old Age Pensioners. He reckons we shall get discouraged before we empty the bottles we bring. Stone me, boy, int you never gooin to finish that? What are you doin, spittin into it to make that last?’
‘Just a half,’ Paul said, handing over his pint. ‘Harry, do you like Frank?’
Harry, standing with a pot in each hand, gave the matter his attention. He said: ‘Thass not a question I often ask myself. I like most people till they teach me different. Far as I’m concerned, the whole hooman race is on probation. Nice to see you smile, boy.’
‘Prat,’ said Paul. ‘Soppy prat.’
At the end of the quay the mist was thrumming with the engines of the unseen St Felix, and the streetlamps, reduced to dandelion-balls of light, made islands to be crossed by the dark sudden figures of men going home from the dozen pubs of the little town.
‘I always think,’ said Ena, tripping along in her court shoes with her King Charles spaniel behind her, ‘they could make a spooky film in Old Tornwich when it’s foggy.’
‘Oh, yes,’ Paul said, cheered up by the thought. ‘Nineteen-forties. Black and white. With—’
‘Basil Rathbone,’ Ena suggested. ‘Lon Chaney.’
‘I was thinking of Jean Gabin.’
‘Oh, foreign,’ Ena said. ‘Yes, and Valli.’
‘Boris Karloff,’ Harry contributed. ‘Bela Lugosi.’
‘I think we were being more subtle,’ said Paul.
‘There’s a monster about tonight,’ Harry said, taking no offence. ‘Young Killer—Jimmy Rigg—see him in the next street. Some bloke in a joke-shop mask, with them hands—you know? The sight of that in the mist redooce Killer to a twelve-year-old boy.’
‘Someone rehearsing for the Carnival,’ Ena said. ‘What was the number of the house, Harry?’
Harry wrinkled his brow, and gave it up. ‘I forget. Do you remember, Paul?’
‘I didn’t hear him.’
‘I should have known better,’ sighed Ena.
‘No,’ protested Harry, ‘we shall find it. If we wait, we shall see other people arrivin.’ He came to a stop under a streetlamp, bottles cradled in his arms. ‘Just you have patience, Ena.’
‘It’s not very warm,’ Ena pointed out. She picked up her small dog and swept it to her bosom, and they nuzzled one another. ‘Choochy features. Oh, she’s shivering.’
Paul said: ‘Do you think Frank was having a little joke? That there isn’t a party?’
‘No, I don’t think,’ Harry said shortly. ‘Bloody hell, boy, he’s a bit older than ten.’
‘Here’s a taxi slowing down,’ said Ena. ‘It must be near here.’
The taxi came to a stop by the light, but no door opened. After a moment a voice called from its darkness: ‘Harry—you lost?’
‘Whass that you, Sam?’ Harry called back, and leaned in at the passenger window. ‘We’re lookin for a party, but thass hidin. Do you know where that is?’
After a pause for thought, the voice replied: ‘No, but I know where there is a party. In New Tornwich. I’ll take you there.’
‘We can’t do that,’ Ena objected. ‘Gatecrashing parties at our age—don’t talk so daft, Sam.’
‘That’s all right,’ promised the invisible driver. ‘That’s okay. She told me to bring people to her party. It’s a girl I know what’s celebratin her birthday, on the spur of the moment, like.’
‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Ena. ‘I wonder if she’s got the police out scouting for her as well.’
‘Is this sort of thing common in Tornwich?’Paul wondered.
‘That’s not uncommon,’ said the voice of Sam.
Harry made a decision and, opening a rear door, stood waiting. ‘Come on, Ena. If we don’t fancy it, Sam will drive us straight home.’
‘Oh well,’ said Ena, ‘why not?’ She clutched her dog close and climbed into the car, Harry crowding behind her.
No one was listening to Paul excusing himself from the unknown girl’s party, and after a moment he surrendered and got in beside the driver. He was surprised to find that Sam, who had the voice of a native of Ipswich, was a young black man. They nodded to one another, and Sam set off.
Once past Ena’s lighthouse they were in the Victorian sprawl of New Tornwich, but the mist, stained by the crude lights of the main road, had made the houses retreat and become country hedgerows. Soon the taxi turned and crossed a railway line, and pulled up before a row of working-men’s cottages of clammy red brick, where an open front door spilled light and disco music.
As the passengers were getting out, a blonde girl in jeans emerged from the house. ‘Who have you brought me, Sam?’ she called. ‘Why, Harry!’ She ran forward and was clasped to the black leather jacket with its perfume of good contraband tobacco.
‘Donna,’ Ena exclaimed. ‘I didn’t know it was your party. Happy birthday, love, give us a kiss.’
While the women embraced, Paul edged nearer to Harry. ‘I don’t think I’ll come in,’ he muttered. ‘Not in the mood. Anyway, I’m expecting a phone call from Greg about midnight, I’d forgotten that.’
‘Who is he?’ Donna asked, discovering Paul. ‘He looks nice.’
‘He’s a very nice boy,’ Harry said, ‘(Paul–Donna), but he have to goo to bed early, so Sam’s takin him home.’ And while the women cajoled and Paul hedged, he opened the passenger door and slipped a half-bottle of whisky on to the seat, with a finger to his lips for Sam’s benefit.
‘Where does he live?’ Sam asked.
‘In Watergate. Fred Heath’s old house. He’s doin a lot of work on that.’
‘He bought it?’ Sam marvelled. ‘Bloody hell. Even if I was a squatter, I should think twice about livin in that place.’
‘Thass goonna be most desirable,’ Harry said, ‘if the poor lad don’t lose heart.’
He reached out a black leather arm to Paul, who had come near, and crushed him to his side. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, ‘won’t you. Now, look, there’s a little bottle there, and you’ve to take that hoom with you. Ena and me int goonna spend long with these youngsters. We might come round to yours for a nightcap.’
‘Right,’ Paul said. ‘Fine.’
‘So don’t you sit broodin. Your friends are on the way.’ He held the slighter man for a moment in a bearhug, then pushed him into the taxi and slammed the door.
‘You’re crazy,’ Paul said, laughing, looking up at him. ‘You kissed me.’
‘Did I?’ said Harry. ‘Well, worse things happen at sea. Look at him, Sam, don’t he look like Don Quixotey when he smile?’
The taxi drew away, its tail-lights faded to ash in the mist. Broad-shouldered Harry turned and made his way, massive in the bright doorway, to the party.
Even now I curse the day—and yet, I think,
Few come within the compass of my curse—
Wherein I did not some notorious ill:
As, kill a man, or else devise his death…
Aaron in Titus Andronicus
The cellars are swept and whitewashed, cleansed of history. A setting that seems to call for casks and hogsheads and bales contains only the bland lumber of middle-class young people in their marriage’s first scene.
The stairs creak. On the ground floor he has installed a fitted kitchen, very new, very shiny, nowadays not so clean. In the big dining-room with two windows on the street he has restored the old panelling and hung insignificant paintings, some of forebears of his own who could not afford to be painted well.
The staircase from there is of solid oak, carpeted, and does not give. On the first floor the door of his dark bedroom is ajar, but the sitting-room door, with light showing below it, is closed on the sound of the World Service News.
The stairs to the floor above are bare, and squeak. The rooms here are large, dingy, untouched; the windows are dusty. Nothing is here but the litter of his nest-building, rolls of wallpaper, tins of paint.
The one closed door below fits badly but has well-oiled hinges. He hears nothing through the News.
He sits listening, sprawled in a chair with his legs out, his head back, his eyes on the ceiling. He lifts a hand and sips from a glass. On a table behind him, near the window, stand the telephone and the lamp which is the only light. He waits for the telephone to ring.
In this room is much of his past, in the form for the most part of books, prints, records. It is the room of a student with money, a student grown a little older. He has not had an eventful life.
He has sat in this chair (crouched, rather) with his head in his hands, many a night. One night he took out of its case an old cut-throat razor with a bone handle, and stared at it.
But now he is calm; now he smiles at a recent memory. He waits for the telephone to ring.
And now I am inside; I know everything.
A movement, a sound, drags him back from his thoughts to the room. His eyes widen, he starts upright in the chair. He looks, through the narrow crack of the doorway, into my face, which he cannot see.
His eyes are on the one eye of the rifle. His mouth splits open his brown beard. He throws up a hand, palm outward, in an unwilled, futile gesture to ward off death.