Collected Short Stories Page 5

  ‘You must have. Hold the umbrella and I’ll try the ignition.’ Leaving Duncan on the flooded path under the inadequate umbrella, Hugo got into the driving seat and inserted the ignition key. The lights gave a flash and went out. Nothing else happened at all. It was now pitch dark. ‘Not a spark,’ said Hugo. ‘Your battery’s flat.’

  ‘It can’t be.’

  ‘I’m afraid it is. Try for yourself.’

  Duncan tried, getting very wet in the process.

  ‘We’d better go back in the house. We’ll get soaked out here.’

  ‘What’s the matter?’ said Elizabeth, who was still standing in the doorway.

  ‘His battery’s flat. The car won’t start.’

  Of course it wasn’t their fault, but somehow Duncan felt it was. It had happened, after all, at their house to which they had fetched him for a disgraceful purpose. He didn’t bother to soften his annoyance.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ll just have to borrow your car, Hugo.’

  Elizabeth closed the door. ‘We don’t have a car any more. We couldn’t afford to run it. It was either keeping a car or taking the boys away from school, so we sold it.’

  ‘I see. Then if I might just use your phone, I’ll ring for a hire car. I’ve a mini-cab number in my wallet.’ One look at her face told him that wasn’t going to be possible either. ‘Now you’ll say you’ve had the phone cut off.’ Damn her! Damn them both!

  ‘We could have afforded it, of course. We just didn’t need it any more. I’m sorry, Duncan. I just don’t know what you can do. But we may as well all go and sit down where it’s warmer.’

  ‘I don’t want to sit down,’ Duncan almost shouted. ‘I have to get home.’ He shook off the hand she had laid on his arm and which seemed to be forcibly detaining him. ‘I must just walk to the nearest house with a phone.’

  Hugo opened the door. The rain was more like a wall of water than a series of falling drops. ‘In this?’

  ‘Then what am I supposed to do?’ Duncan cried fretfully.

  ‘Stay the night,’ said Elizabeth calmly. ‘I really don’t know what you can do but stay the night.’

  The bed was just what he would have expected a bed in the Crouch ménage to be, hard, narrow and cold. She had given him a hot water bottle which was an object he hadn’t set eyes on in ten years. And Hugo had lent him a pair of pyjamas. All the time this was going on he had protested that he couldn’t stay, that there must be some other way, but in the end he had yielded. Not that they had been welcoming. They had treated the whole thing rather as if – well, how had they treated it? Duncan lay in the dark, clutching the bottle between his knees, and tried to assess just what their attitude had been. Fatalistic, he thought, that was it. They had behaved as if this were inevitable, that there was no escape for him and here, like it or not, he must stay.

  Escape was a ridiculous word, of course, but it was the sort of word you used when you were trapped somewhere for a whole night in the home of people who were obviously antagonistic, if not hostile. Why had he been such a fool as to leave those car lights on? He couldn’t remember that he had done and yet he must have. Nobody else would have turned them on. Why should they?

  He wished they would go to bed too. That they hadn’t he could tell by the light, the rectangular outline of dazzlement that showed round the frame of his bedroom door. And he could hear them talking, not the words but the buzz of conversation. These late-Victorian houses were atrociously built, you could hear every sound. The rain drumming on the roof sounded as if it were pounding on cardboard rather than on slates. He didn’t think there was much prospect of sleep. How could he sleep with the noise and all that on his mind, the worry of getting the car moved, of finding some way of getting to the office? And it made him feel very uneasy, their staying up like that, particularly as she had said, ‘If you’ll go into the bathroom first, Duncan, we’ll follow you.’ Follow him! That must have been all of half an hour ago. He pressed the switch of his bedlamp and saw that it was eleven thirty. Time they were in bed if she had to get to her school in the morning and he to his accountancy course.

  Once more in the dark, but for that gold-edged rectangle, he considered the car lights question again. He was certain he had turned them out. Of course it was hard to be certain of anything when you were as upset as he. The pressure they had put on him had been simply horrible, and the worst moments those when he had been alone with Hugo while that woman was fishing out of her oven the ancient pullet she’d dished up to him. Really, she’d been a hell of a time getting that main course when you considered what it had amounted to. Could she . . . ? Only a madwoman would do such a thing, and what possible motive could she have had? But if you lived in a remote place and you wanted someone to stay in your house overnight, if you wanted to keep them there, how better than to immobilize their car? He shivered, even while he told himself such fancies were absurd.

  At any rate, they were coming up now. Every board in the house creaked and the stairs played a tune like a broken old violin. He heard Hugo mumble something – the man had drunk far too much brandy – and then she said, ‘Leave all the rest to me.’

  Another shiver, that hadn’t very much to do with the cold, ran through him. He couldn’t think why he had shivered. Surely that was quite a natural thing for a woman to say on going to bed? She only meant, You go to bed and I’ll lock up and turn off the lights. And yet it was a phrase that was familiar to him in quite another context. Turning on his side away from the light and into fresh caverns of icy sheet, he tried to think where he had heard it. A quotation? Yes – it came from Macbeth. Lady Macbeth said it when she and her husband were plotting the old king’s murder. And what was the old king’s name? Douglas? Donal?

  Someone had come out of the bathroom and someone else gone in. Did they always take such ages getting to bed? The lavatory flush roared and a torrent rushed through pipes that seemed to pass under his bed. He heard footsteps cross the landing and a door close. Apparently, they slept in the room next to his. He turned over, longing for the light to go out. It was a pity there was no key in that lock so that he could have locked his door.

  As soon as the thought had formed and been uttered in his brain, he thought how fantastic it was. What, lock one’s bedroom door in a private house? Suppose his hostess came in the morning with a cup of tea? She would think it very odd. And she might come. She had put this bottle in his bed and had placed a glass of water on the table. Of course he couldn’t dream of locking the door, and why should he want to? One of them was in the bathroom again.

  Suddenly he found himself thinking about one of the men he had sacked and who had threatened him. The man had said, ‘Don’t think you’ll get away with this, and if you show your ugly face within a mile of my place you may not live to regret it.’ Of course he had got away with it and had nothing to regret. On the other hand, he hadn’t shown himself within a mile of the man’s place . . . The light had gone out at last. Sleep now, he told himself. Empty your mind or think of something nice. Your summer holiday in the villa, for instance, think about that.

  The gardens would be wonderful with the oleanders and the bougainvillea. And the sun would warm his old bones as he sat on his terrace, looking down through the cleft in the pines at the blue triangle of Mediterranean which was brighter and gentler than that woman’s eyes . . . Never mind the woman, forget her. Perhaps he should have the terrace raised and extended and set up on it that piece of statuary – surely Roman – which he had found in the pinewoods. It would cost a great deal of money, but it was his money. Why shouldn’t he spend his own? He must try to be less sensitive, he thought, less troubled by this absurd social conscience which for some reason he had lately developed. Not, he reflected with a faint chuckle, that it actually stopped him spending his money or enjoying himself. It was a nuisance, that was all.

  He would have the terrace extended and maybe a black marble floor laid in the salon. Fraser’s profits looked as if they would hit a new high this year. Why n
ot get that fellow Churchouse to do all their printing for them? If he was really down on his luck and desperate he’d be bound to work for a cut rate, jump at the chance, no doubt . . .

  God damn it, it was too much! They were talking in there. He could hear their whisperings, rapid, emotional almost, through the wall. They were an absurd couple, no sense of humour between the pair of them. Intense, like characters out of some tragedy.

  ‘The labour we delight in physics pain’ – Macbeth had said that, Macbeth who killed the old king. And she had said it to him, Duncan, when he had apologized for the trouble he was causing. The king was called Duncan too. Of course he was. He was called Duncan and so was the old king and he too, in a way, was an old king, the monarch of the Fraser empire. Whisper, whisper, breathed the walls.

  He sat up and put on the light. With the light on he felt better. He was sure, though, that he hadn’t left those car lights on. ‘Leave all the rest to me . . .’ Why say that? Why not say what everyone said, ‘I’ll see to everything’? Macbeth and his wife had entertained the old king in their house and murdered him in his bed, although he had done them no harm, done nothing but be king. So it wasn’t a parallel, was it? For he, Duncan Fraser, had done something, something which might merit vengeance. He had sacked Hugo Crouch and taken away his livelihood. It wasn’t a parallel.

  He turned off the light, sighed and lay down again. They were still whispering. He heard the floor creak as one of them came out of the bedroom. It wasn’t a parallel – it was worse. Why hadn’t he seen that? Lady Macbeth and her husband had no cause, no cause . . . A sweat broke out on his face and he reached for the glass of water. But he didn’t drink. It was stupid not to but . . . The morning would soon come. ‘O, never shall sun that morrow see . . . !’ Where did that come from? Need he ask?

  Whoever it was in the bathroom had left it and gone back to the other one. But only for a moment. Again he heard the boards creak, again someone was moving about on that dark landing. Dark, yes, pitch-dark, for they hadn’t switched the light on this time. And Duncan felt then the first thrill of real fear, the like of which he hadn’t known since he was a little boy and had been shut up in the nursery cupboard of his father’s manse. He mustn’t be afraid, he mustn’t. He must think of his heart. Why should they want vengeance? He’d explained. He’d told them the truth, taking the full burden of blame on himself.

  The room was so dark that he didn’t see the door handle turn. He heard it. It creaked very softly. His heart began a slow steady pounding and he contracted his body, forcing it back against the wall. Whoever it was had come into the room. He could see the shape of him – or her – as a denser blackness in the dark.

  ‘What . . . ? Who . . . ?’ he said, quavering, his throat dry.

  The shape grew fluid, glided away, and the door closed softly. They wanted to see if he was asleep. They would kill him when he was asleep. He sat up, switched on the light and put his face in his hands. ‘O, never shall sun that morrow see!’ He’d put all that furniture against the door, that chest of drawers, his bed, the chair. His throat was parched now and he reached for the water, taking a long draught. It was icy cold.

  They weren’t whispering any more. They were waiting in silence. He got up and put his coat round him. In the bitter cold he began lugging the furniture away from the walls, lifting the iron bedstead that felt so small and narrow when he was in it but was so hideously weighty.

  Straightening up from his second attempt, he felt it, the pain in his chest and down his left arm. It came like a clamp, a clamp being screwed and at the same time slowly heated red-hot. It took his body in hot iron fingers and squeezed his ribs. And sweat began to pour from him as if the temperature in the room had suddenly risen tremendously. O God, O God, the water in the glass! They would have to get him a doctor, they would have to, they couldn’t be so pitiless. He was old and tired and his heart was bad.

  He pulled the coat round the pain and staggered out into the black passage. Their door – where was their door? He found it by fumbling at the walls, scrabbling Like an imprisoned animal, and when he found it he kicked it open and swayed on the threshold, holding the pain in both his hands.

  They were sitting on their bed with their backs to him, not in bed but sitting there, the shapes of them silhouetted against the light of a small low-bulbed bedlamp.

  ‘Oh, please,’ he said, ‘please help me. Don’t kill me, I beg you not to kill me. I’ll go on my knees to you. I know I’ve done wrong, I did a terrible thing. I didn’t make an error of judgement. I sacked Hugo because he wanted too much for the staff, he wanted more money for everyone and I couldn’t let them have it. I wanted my new car and my holidays. I had to have my villa – so beautiful, my villa and my gardens. Ah, God, I know I was greedy, but I’ve borne the guilt of it for months, every day on my conscience, the guilt of it . . .’ They turned two white faces, implacable, merciless. They rose and came scrambling across their bed. ‘Have pity on me,’ he screamed. ‘Don’t kill me. I’ll give you everything I’ve got, I’ll give you a million . . .’

  But they had seized him with their hands and it was too late. She had told him it was too late.

  ‘In our house!’ she said.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Hugo. ‘That’s what Lady Macbeth said. What does it matter whether it was in our house or not?’

  ‘I wish I’d never invited him.’

  ‘Well, it was your idea. You said let’s have him here because he’s a widower and lonely. I didn’t want him. It was ghastly the way he insisted on talking about firing me when we wanted to keep off the subject at any price. I was utterly fed-up when he had to stay the night.’

  ‘What do we do now?’ said Elizabeth.

  ‘Get the police, I should think, or a doctor. It’s stopped raining. I’ll get dressed and go.’

  ‘But you’re not well! You kept throwing up.’

  ‘I’m OK now. I drank too much brandy. It was such a strain, all of it, nobody knowing what to talk about. God, what a business! He was all right when you went into his room just now, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Half-asleep. I thought. I was going to apologize for all the racket you were making but he seemed nearly asleep. Did you get any of that he was trying to say when he came in here? I didn’t.’

  ‘No, it was just gibberish. We couldn’t have done anything for him darling. We did try to catch him before he fell.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘He had a bad heart.’

  ‘In more ways than one, poor old man,’ said Elizabeth, and she laid a blanket gently over Duncan, though he was past feeling heat or cold or guilt or fear or anything any more.

  You Can’t Be Too Careful

  Della Galway went out with a man for the first (and almost the last) time on her nineteenth birthday. He parked his car, and as they were going into the restaurant she asked him if he had locked all the doors and the boot. When he turned back and said, yes, he’d better do that, she asked him why he didn’t have a burglar-proof locking device on the steering wheel.

  Her parents had brought her up to be cautious. When she left that happy home in that safe little provincial town, she took her parents’ notions with her to London. At first she could only afford the rent of a single room. It upset her that the other tenants often came in late at night and left the front door on the latch. Although her room was at the top of the house and she had nothing worth stealing, she lay in bed sweating with fear. At work it was just the same. Nobody bothered about security measures. Della was always the last to leave, and sometimes she went back two or three times to check that all the office doors and the outer door were shut.

  The personnel officer suggested she see a psychiatrist.

  Della was very ambitious. She had an economics degree, a business studies diploma, and had come out top at the end of her secretarial course. She knew a psychiatrist would find something wrong with her – they had to earn their money like everyone else – and long sessions of treatment would follow which wouldn
’t help her towards her goal, that of becoming the company’s first woman director. They always held that sort of thing against you.

  ‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said in her brisk way. ‘It was the firm’s property I was worried about. If they like to risk losing their valuable equipment, that’s their look-out.’

  She stopped going back to check the doors – it didn’t prey on her mind much as her own safety wasn’t involved – and three weeks later two men broke in, stole all the electric typewriters and damaged the computer beyond repair. It proved her right, but she didn’t say so. The threat of the psychiatrist had frightened her so much that she never again aired her burglar obsession at work.

  When she got promotion and a salary rise, she decided to get a flat of her own. The landlady was a woman after her own heart. Mrs Swanson liked Della from the first and explained to her, as to a kindred spirit, the security arrangements.

  ‘This is a very nice neighbourhood, Miss Galway, but the crime rate in London is rising all the time, and I always say you can’t be too careful.’

  Della said she couldn’t agree more.

  ‘So I always keep this side gate bolted on the inside. The back door into this little yard must also be kept locked and bolted. The bathroom window looks out into the garden, you see, so I like the garden door and the bathroom door to be locked at night too.’

  ‘Very wise,’ said Della, noting that the window in the bed-sitting room had screws fixed to its sashes which prevented its being opened more than six inches. ‘What did you say the rent was?’

  ‘Twenty pounds a week.’ Mrs Swanson was a landlady first, and a kindred spirit secondly, so when Della hesitated, she said, ‘It’s a garden flat, completely self-contained and you’ve got your own phone. I shan’t have any trouble in letting it. I’ve got someone else coming to view it at two.’

  Della stopped hesitating. She moved in at the end of the week, having supplied Mrs Swanson with references and assured her she was quiet, prudent as to locks and bolts, and not inclined to have ‘unauthorized’ people to stay overnight. By unauthorized people Mrs Swanson meant men. Since the episode over the car on her nineteenth birthday, Della had entered tentatively upon friendships with men, but no man had ever taken her out more than twice and none had ever got as far as to kiss her. She didn’t know why this was, as she had always been polite and pleasant, insisting on paying her share, careful to carry her own coat, handbag and parcels so as to give her escort no trouble, ever watchful of his wallet and keys, offering to have the theatre tickets in her own safe keeping, and anxious not to keep him out too late. That one after another men dropped her worried her very little. No spark of sexual feeling had ever troubled her, and the idea of sharing her orderly, routine-driven life with a man – untidy, feckless, casual creatures as they all, with the exception of her father, seemed to be – was a daunting one. She meant to get to the top on her own. One day perhaps, when she was about thirty-five and with a high-powered lady executive’s salary, then if some like-minded, quiet and prudent man came along . . . In the meantime, Mrs Swanson had no need to worry.