He turned out of Radigoyle Street into Joseph Street this evening, passing the bright lights of the Demon without so much as a sideways glance. Flossie Williams, one of the Joseph Street tarts, smiled at him as he passed, and Anderson, breathing deeply, caught a whiff of her cheap scent. He felt a mingled exhilaration and depression as he approached his home, an obscure sense of wrongdoing mingled with an equally obscure feeling of pleasure. His key was in the lock when something touched his shoulder. Pivoting quickly on his heel he faced the great bulk of Fletchley, shaking with laughter in the Pimlico dark. “I crept up on you,” Fletchley said. “I saw you pass the old Demon. You never heard me. Me in my rubber-soled shoes.”
“Are you drunk?”
“Old boy,” Fletchley was reproachful, “I’ve had a pint to drown my sorrows, not a snoutful. A snoutful is out of the question, much as I should like it. Tonight I have to write immortal verse. A dozen orders to fill, old boy.” He declaimed:
“I don’t know much of rhyme and meter,
So I’ll say God Bless Mummy.’ Peter.
That’s from a little kiddy, six months old, to his mother. A nice sentiment, eh?”
“Where’s Elaine?”
Fletchley wavered on his feet and then said: “Out. Won’t be back till late. I’m turning an honest penny on my lonesome.”
Fletchley was a man of many curious occupations, all of them appropriate of an inhabitant of Joseph Street. He had made money by starting chain letters and pyramids, he had held at one time a valuable insurance book, he was an agent for the pushboards by which small cricket and football clubs raise funds. His latest way of earning money was by supplying rhymed Christmas and birthday greeting wishes. The customer would give details of the recipient’s age and character and Fletchley would make notes reading: “Uncle Bill, birthday, from niece Mary. Big nose, retriever dog Laddie, granddaughter Phyllis learning to talk. Humorous.” Uncle Bill would then receive on his birthday a card which contained two or three printed verses embodying the points Fletchley had jotted down. Fletchley set up these cards, which were of a sentimental humorous or reverent nature, on a small hand press, and his charge for them varied between half a crown and five shillings according to the length of the message. The business was largely seasonal, but there was a steady birthday demand throughout the year.
The house had been clumsily converted into two flats, with a hall common to both. Anderson was just about to open the door of his flat when Fletchley said: “By the way, old boy, that police chap called round to see you this evening. He doesn’t seem to be a bad fellow. We had quite a chin-wag.”
“You’d better come in,” Anderson said. He turned on the light. “What will you drink? Gin or whisky?”
“Won’t say no to a little drop of something to keep the cold out. Whisky – and don’t kill it. Can’t think where you get the stuff.”
“Valerie got it – black market.” Anderson poured himself a drink. “What did he want?”
Who? Oh, the copper,” Fletchley shook again, a pinpoint head wobbling uncertainly on an enormous sagging body. There were food stains on his jacket, and above a mountainous belly the tapes of pants were visible, held by his braces. “He’s mustard,” he chuckled.
“What do you mean?”
“Mustard, old boy, mustard. His name’s Cresse and he’s hot as mustard, see? But what did he want? He wanted to see you. Something to do with Valerie. He’s a nice sort of a chap.”
“What did he ask you?”
“I didn’t give away any secrets, don’t worry,” Fletchley said and winked portentously. It seemed to Anderson that there was something strange about Fletchley tonight. His whole body was trembling slightly, as though convulsed by some elaborate inner joke. Sharply, Anderson said:
“Secrets, what do you mean, secrets? And why should I worry?”
“Only my joke, old boy.” Fletchley was momentarily solemn, but Anderson had an uncomfortable feeling that this solemnity was maintained only with an effort, and that if the fat man let himself go he would burst out laughing. “Do you know he’s got two kids?”
“Who?”
“He’s got two kids and he wants me to write birthday messages for ’em. Fancy sending birthday wishes from a CID Inspector. He is CID, isn’t he?”
“But what did he want to ask you?”
“Pretty near everything from the time I get up in the morning to the width of my pyjama stripes. All sorts of questions,” Fletchley rambled. “You wouldn’t believe the sort of questions he asked.” And again it seemed to Anderson that there was something very odd, something almost menacing, about the tone of the fat man’s voice. But this impression was no sooner in Anderson’s mind than it was gone again, as Fletchley drained his glass and put on his mask of good-fellowship, if indeed it was a mask and not a true reflection of the sentimental birthday-greeting soul within his great bulk. “I must be going. ‘Night, old boy.”
“Good night.”
The door closed and he sat still for a moment in the armchair, staring straight ahead of him. Then, as his eyes slowly focused to take in the furnishings of the room, the modernist grey carpet with its jagged pattern of blue and orange picking up the same colours in the curtains, the chromium standard lamp, the Lalique glass on the mantelpiece, the chromium electric fire, the white ghastly light from the fluorescent strips on the ceiling, as he, took in the whole brassy brightness of the place he thought:
I must get away from here; this is nothing to do with me.
For if the choice of neighbourhood was Anderson’s, reluctantly agreed to by Valerie because it was almost impossible to find a place to live in, the flat itself was Valerie’s, just as Elaine Fletchley was Valerie’s friend. There was one incongruous element, however, which stood out as an oddity in that room of chromium furniture and tubular lighting; a Georgian writing desk which stood between the electric fire and an angular wall lamp. This writing desk had belonged to Anderson’s parents, and his father had given it to him when he moved from home. He walked over to the desk now and opened a drawer below the main body of the desk with a small key. He felt at the back of this drawer, pressed a small protrusion, and another small hidden drawer was revealed, just large enough to contain a book with a cover of black leather and stiff marbled corners. Anderson took this book in both hands, holding it carefully as if it were a fragile object. Then he sat down at the desk, staring at the black cover. Anderson had first written in this book a week ago, and had sat up four nights in succession, writing each night for several hours. Every night since then he had felt compelled to read the story put down between the black leather covers with marbled corners. He had written the story himself, and yet he felt so remote from it that a sensation of utter strangeness overcame him while he read, so that he seemed to be reading of somebody else’s life and not his own. And now the craving to read what was written in the book had become so strong that it was the first thing he turned to when he came back from work.
Tonight he had gone to the cinema, but in front of the Hollywood faces he saw quite distinctly the shapes and appearance of the book. Now he sat looking at the cover, holding the book in both hands. I can do whatever I wish, he thought. A movement of the hand and this book returns to the drawer, another movement and the drawer is closed. A movement of the hand: and the hand is controlled by the brain. But if a person dissociated from the figure Anderson recognised as himself – the slick executive, in line for a directorship – if somebody else had put down what was in this book, could not a similarly dissociated figure put back the book in the drawer, with a movement of which Anderson himself had no awareness? Was it possible to experiment, he wondered, to make one’s mind a conscious blank? And while he thought this, his grip upon the book must have relaxed, for it dropped to the floor, landing with a soft
plop
upon the carpet. Anderson picked up the book, opened it, and began to read:
Now it is all over. The funeral is over, the inquest is over, the verdict has been given. Two people who had very little in common have ceased to live together. One has fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck; the other continues an existence in which he regards his own ridiculous occupation with extraordinary gravity. Is there anything more to be said?
Yes, there is a great deal more to be said. A casual death like this one makes one question the whole of existence. Why should Valerie and I have lived together for years? What possible meaning can one attach to our life together, how can one understand it? And if such a ridiculous end to a shared life is possible, doesn’t this illuminate the absolute absurdity of existence itself? Now that Valerie is dead, I see quite certainly that I didn’t love her. I am absolutely unable to understand why I married her. I can’t see why I didn’t push her down the stairs long ago. Wyvern, at the office, has a phrase which he uses every now and again when things are going wrong: “Why don’t we all get in one great bed and – one another?”
Well, why don’t we?
But of course that kind of thing won’t do – that pure abandonment to the idea that life is nonsense. There must be somewhere an explanation of human activity which isn’t purely biological, which interprets life in terms of some kind of meaning. It’s to try to get some idea of what it all means that I’m putting down this individual case history of my life with Val.
I met Val first at a party given by Elaine Fletchley. At least it was given by
Woman Beautiful,
the high-class fashion magazine she works for, and Elaine was a hostess. They asked somebody from all the bright advertising agencies, and I went from Vincent’s. It was a very dull party. I had a bit of chat with other advertising figures and was just working my way over to say good-bye to Elaine when I bumped into a girl and upset her drink. “Oh dear,” she said. “Oh dear, my poor frock.” She stared at me with wide-apart eyes of a curious hazel colour. Then she said: “But I want another drinky.” There was just the faintest suggestion of a lisp in the ‘way she rolled her r’s. So I got her a drink and we talked, and it turned out that she worked for
Woman Beautiful,
too, as an assistant fashion editor. I told her that I was a copywriter and she said: “Oh, but you must be awfully clever.” She was so short that she had to look up at me, and she did so with a kind of starry gaze. I can remember wondering what I was doing talking to her. She was just the kind of girl, I can remember thinking, for whom I had no use at all. How is it possible, then, to account for my next action? I leaned over (I can see myself doing it quite clearly) and said: “Let’s get out of this din and go somewhere else?” And what did she say? She giggled and answered with quite a definite lisp. “I say you awe a quick worthker.” We left the party, had some drinks – she soaked up the drink like a sponge – and she stayed at the flat I lived in then, in Kensington. When she left in the morning we arranged to meet that evening. We did. And the next and the next. In six months we were married.
So there it is, or there’s the beginning of it. During the whole of that six months if I’d ever asked myself whether I liked Val, the answer would have been an unhesitating No.
I dislike girls who lisp, girls who are kittenish, girls who drink too much. Valerie did all of those things. Why did I marry her, then? Partly I’d got into the habit of seeing her – but what made me start the habit? Partly no doubt I was the victim of that feeling war and bombing gave you, that no relationship you formed mattered much, or was likely to be permanent – and how damned mistaken that feeling was. Partly she was good in bed, and although I was over thirty when I met her I hadn’t much experience of that sort of thing. Although Val was nearly ten years younger than I was, I gathered she’d had plenty. But although I enjoyed our times in bed, I wasn’t all that interested. That certainly won’t do for a main motive.
And why did Valerie marry me? If I can’t explain my own motives, I certainly can’t understand hers. I think she found me attractive – although few women have done so. I believe she liked men older than herself. And – although I may be quite wrong – I believe she regarded me as a very different person from the man I am. Subconsciously I assumed that we should stop drinking and going to parties after we got married. But Val assumed that we should go on drinking, and go to more parties than ever.
So we started off wrong. And then there was trouble about this house. Val was essentially what I think of as an Earl’s Court girl – nice gay parties with people in the rag trade as she called it, a few commercial artists, some fifth-rate actors. Well, you can get all that in our bit of Pimlico if you want it, but in rather too sordid a way for Val. She liked a bit of glamour spread over it – not too much, just a thin layer. She was horrified when she first saw the house and even more so when I told her I liked it. “But how
can
you like it? It’s so vulgar. That woman Flossie Williams – she’s just a tawt.” And what are your friends, do you think? I asked her. And what are you? Didn’t you sleep with me the first time you met me? The only difference was that she got marriage instead of a spot cash settlement. At that she burst into tears, and it’s true I was unfair, because Val was a one-man woman. I say I think she found me attractive, but I’m doing myself an injustice. The fact is that she never looked at anybody else at all. She told Elaine Fletchley so, and Elaine told me. And how can one explain that? That’s as nonsensical as the rest of it.
So Val burst into tears. She was always bursting into tears; it was one of the most irritating things about her. Then she asked me again why I liked living here, but I couldn’t answer that, because I didn’t know. There was just something about the streets and the people and the atmosphere, that’s all.
But if Valerie couldn’t get her own way about the house, at least she made it look the way she wanted. It’s all round me now, as it’s been round me for years – the glaring colours, the fumed oak paradise in the bedroom. “It’s so bright and gay and new,” she’d say – but with the lisp, of course. “I hate old stuff. I’d like life to start again every morning. New people, new job, new places, new everything. Wouldn’t you like that?” And when I said truthfully that I’d like nothing less, she’d be upset. And she not only had her way about the look of the place; she got Elaine to live in it as well. First she said the house was too big for just the two of us. Maybe there’ll be three one day, I said, but she didn’t want children. Then she wanted Elaine to come and live here with us. I didn’t want it; I wanted to be alone. But she had it her way. We turned the place into two self-contained flats and we had the ground floor and the Fletchleys had the first. We shared the cellar, where we both kept a small stock of drink. Elaine is a neat, tarty little piece, slick and smart and hard. What did she see in Fletchley to marry him? That’s another problem, but I can’t go into it now.