The long street ran down between the small dusty houses. A milk float clattered round a corner out of sight. She said, 'Well, can I go now?'
'You think me a fool,' he said bitterly. 'Keep on walking.'
'You might take one of these bags.' She dropped one in the road and went on; he had to pick it up. It was heavy, he carried it in his left hand, he needed his right for the automatic.
She said, 'This isn't taking us into Nottwich. We ought to have turned right at the corner.'
'I know where I'm going.'
'I wish I did.'
The little houses went endlessly on under the fog. It was very early. A woman came to the door and took in the milk. Through a window Anne saw a man shaving. She wanted to scream to him, but he might have been in another world; she could imagine his stupid stare, the slow working of the brain before he realized anything was wrong. On they went, Raven a step behind. She wondered if he were bluffing her; he must be wanted for something very serious if he was really ready to shoot.
She spoke her thoughts aloud, 'Is it murder?' and the lapse of her flippancy, the whispered fear, came to Raven like something familiar, friendly: he was used to fear. It had lived inside him for twenty years. It was normality he couldn't cope with. He answered her without strain, 'No, I'm not wanted for that.'
She challenged him, 'Then you wouldn't dare to shoot,' but he had the answer pat, the answer which never failed to convince because it was the truth. 'I'm not going to prison. I'd rather hang. My father hanged.'
She asked again, 'Where are we going?' watching all the time for her chance. He didn't answer.
'Do you know this place?' but he had said his say. And suddenly the chance was there: outside a little stationer's where the morning posters leaned, looking in the window filled with cheap notepaper, pens and ink bottles—a policeman. She felt Raven come up behind her, it was all too quick, she hadn't time to make up her mind, they were past the policeman and on down the mean road. It was too late to scream now; he was twenty yards away; there'd be no rescue. She said in a low voice, 'It must be murder.'
The repetition stung him into speech.' That's justice for you. Always thinking the worst. They've pinned a robbery on to me, and I don't even know where the notes were stolen.' A man came out of a public-house and began to wipe the steps with a wet cloth; they could smell frying bacon; the suitcases weighed on their arms. Raven couldn't change his hands for fear of leaving hold of the automatic. He said, 'If a man's born ugly, he doesn't stand a chance. It begins at school. It begins before that.'
'What's wrong with your face?' she asked with bitter amusement. There seemed hope while he talked. It must be harder to murder anyone with whom you'd had any kind of relationship. 'My lip, of course.'
'What's up with your lip?'
He said with astonishment, 'Do you mean you haven't noticed—?'
'Oh,' Anne said, 'I suppose you mean your hare-lip. I've seen worse things than that.' They had left the little dirty houses behind them. She read the name of the new street: Shakespeare Avenue. Bright-red bricks and tudor gables and half timbering, doors with stained glass, names like Restholme. These houses represented something worse than the meanness of poverty, the meanness of the spirit. They were on the very edge of Nottwich now, where the speculative builders were running up their hire-purchase houses. It occurred to Anne that he had brought her here to kill her in the scarred fields behind the housing estate, where the grass had been trampled into the clay and the stumps of trees showed where an old wood had been. Plodding on they passed a house with an open door which at any hour of the day visitors could enter and inspect, from the small square parlour to the small square bedroom and the bathroom and water closet off the landing. A big placard said:' Come in and Inspect A Cozyholme. Ten Pounds Down and a House Is Yours.'
'Are you going to buy a house?' she said with desperate humour.
He said,' I've got a hundred and ninety pounds in my pocket and I couldn't buy a box of matches with them. I tell you, I was double-crossed. I never stole these notes. A bastard gave them me.'
'That was generous.'
He hesitated outside 'Sleepy Nuik'. It was so new that the builder's paint had not been removed from the panes. He said, 'It was for a piece of work I did. I did the work well. He ought to have paid me properly. I followed him here. A bastard called Chol-mon-deley.'
He pushed her through the gate of 'Sleepy Nuik', up the unmade path and round to the back door. They were at the edge of the fog here: it was as if they were at the boundary between night and day; it faded out in long streamers into the grey winter sky. He put his shoulder against the back door and the little doll's house lock snapped at once out of the cheap rotten wood. They stood in the kitchen, a place of wires waiting for bulbs, of tubes waiting for the gas cooker. 'Get over to the wall,' he said, 'where I can watch you.'
He sat down on the floor with the pistol in his hand. He said, 'I'm tired. All night standing in that train. I can't think properly. I don't know what to do with you.'
Anne said, 'I've got a job here. I haven't a penny if I lose it. I'll give you my word I'll say nothing if you'll let me go.' She added hopelessly, 'But you wouldn't believe me.'
'People don't trouble to keep their word to me,' Raven said. He brooded darkly in his dusty corner by the sink. He said, 'I'm safe here for a while as long as you are here too.' He put his hand to his face and winced at the soreness of the burns. Anne made a movement. He said, 'Don't move. I'll shoot if you move.'
'Can't I sit down?' she said. 'I'm tired too. I've got to be on my feet all the afternoon.' But while she spoke she saw herself, bundled into a cupboard with the blood still wet. She added, 'Dressed up as a Chink. Singing.' But he wasn't listening to her; he was making his own plans in his own darkness. She tried to keep her courage up with the first song that came into her head, humming it because it reminded her of Mather, the long ride home, the 'see you tomorrow'.
'It's only Kew To you, But to me It's Paradise.'
He said, 'I've heard that tune.' He couldn't remember where: he remembered a dark night and a cold wind and hunger and the scratch of a needle. It was as if something sharp and cold were breaking in his heart with great pain. He sat there under the sink with the automatic in his hand and began to cry. He made no sound, the tears seemed to run like flies of their own will from the corners of his eyes. Anne didn't notice for a while, humming the song. 'They say that's a snow-flower a man brought from Greenland.' Then she saw. She said, 'What's the matter?'
Raven said, 'Keep back against that wall or I'll shoot.'
'You're all in.'
'That doesn't matter to you.'
'Well, I suppose I'm human,' Anne said. 'You haven't done me any harm yet.'
He said, 'This doesn't mean anything. I'm just tired.' He looked along the bare dusty boards of the unfinished kitchen. He tried to swagger. 'I'm tired of living in hotels. I'd like to fix up this kitchen. I learned to be an electrician once. I'm educated.' He said: '"Sleepy Nuik". It's a good name when you are tired. But they've gone and spelt "Nook" wrong.'
'Let me go,' Anne said. 'You can trust me. I'll not say a thing. I don't even know who you are.'
He laughed miserably. 'Trust you. I'd say I can. When you get into the town you'll see my name in the papers and my description, what I'm wearing, how old I am. I never stole the notes, but I can't put a description in of the man I want: name of Chol-mon-deley, profession double-crosser, fat, wears an emerald ring...'
'Why,' she said, 'I believe I travelled down with a man like that. I wouldn't have thought he'd have the nerve...'
'Oh, he's only the agent,' Raven said, 'but if I could find him I'd squeeze the names...'
'Why don't you give yourself up? Tell the police what happened?'
'That's a great idea, that is. Tell them it was Cholmondeley's friends got the old Czech killed. You're a bright girl.'
'The old Czech?' she exclaimed. A little more light came into the kitchen as the fog lifted over the housi
ng estate, the wounded fields. She said, 'You don't mean what the papers are so full of?'
'That's it,' he said with gloomy pride.
'You know the man who shot him?'
'As well as myself.'
'And Cholmondeley's mixed up in it... Doesn't that mean—that everyone's all wrong?'
'They don't know a thing about it, these papers. They can't give credit where credit's due.'
'And you know and Cholmondeley. Then there won't be a war at all if you find Cholmondeley.'
' I don't care a damn whether there's a war or not. I only want to know who it is who double-crossed me. I want to get even,' he explained, looking up at her across the floor, with his hand over his mouth, hiding his lip, noticing that she was young and flushed and lovely with no more personal interest than a mangy wolf will show from the cage in the groomed well-fed bitch beyond the bars. 'A war won't do people any harm,' he said. 'It'll show them what's what, it'll give them a taste of their own medicine. I know. There's always been a war for me.' He touched the automatic. 'All that worries me is what to do with you to keep you quiet for twenty-four hours.'
She said under her breath, 'You wouldn't kill me, would you?'
'If it's the only way,' he said. 'Let me think a bit.'
'But I'd be on your side,' she implored him, looking this way and that for anything to throw, for a chance of safety.
'Nobody's on my side,' Raven said. 'I've learned that. Even a crook doctor... You see—I'm ugly. I don't pretend to be one of your handsome fellows. But I'm educated. I've thought things out.' He said quickly, 'I'm wasting time. I ought to get started.'
'What are you going to do?' she asked, scrambling to her feet.
'Oh,' he said in a tone of disappointment, 'you are scared again. You were fine when you weren't scared.' He faced her across the kitchen with the automatic pointed at her breast. He pleaded with her. 'There's no need to be scared. This lip—'
'I don't mind your lip,' she said desperately. 'You aren't bad-looking. You ought to have a girl. She'd stop you worrying about that lip.'
He shook his head. 'You're talking that way because you are scared. You can't get round me that way. But it's hard luck on you, my picking on you. You shouldn't be so afraid of death. We've all got to die. If there's a war, you'll die anyway. It's sudden and quick: it doesn't hurt,' he said, remembering the smashed skull of the old man—death was like that: no more difficult than breaking an egg.
She whispered, 'Are you going to shoot me?'
'Oh no, no,' he said, trying to calm her, 'turn your back and go over to that door. We'll find a room where I can lock you up for a few hours.' He fixed his eyes on her back; he wanted to shoot her clean: he didn't want to hurt her.
She said, 'You aren't so bad. We might have been friends if we hadn't met like this. If this was the stage-door. Do you meet girls at stage-doors?'
'Me,' he said, 'no. They wouldn't look at me.'
'You aren't ugly,' she said. 'I'd rather you had that lip than a cauliflower ear like all those fellows who think they are tough. The girls go crazy on them when they are in shorts. But they look silly in a dinner jacket.' Raven thought: if I shoot her here anyone may see her through a window; I'll shoot her upstairs in the bathroom. He said, 'Go on. Walk.'
She said, 'Let me go this afternoon. Please. I'll lose my job if I'm not at the theatre.'
They came out into the little glossy hall, which smelt of paint. She said, 'I'll give you a seat for the show.'
'Go on,' he said, 'up the stairs.'
'It's worth seeing. Alfred Bleek as the Widow Twankey.' There were only three doors on the little landing: one had ground-glass panes. 'Open the door,' he said, 'and go in there.' He decided that he would shoot her in the back as soon as she was over the threshold; then he would only have to close the door and she would be out of sight. A small aged voice whispered agonizingly in his memory through a closed door. Memories had never troubled him. He didn't mind death; it was foolish to be scared of death in this bare wintry world. He said hoarsely, 'Are you happy? I mean, you like your job?'
'Oh, not the job,' she said. 'But the job won't go on for ever. Don't you think someone might marry me? I'm hoping.'
He whispered, 'Go in. Look through that window,' his finger touching the trigger. She went obediently forward; he brought the automatic up, his hand didn't tremble, he told himself that she would feel nothing. Death wasn't a thing she need be scared about. She had taken her handbag from under her arm; he noticed the odd sophisticated shape; a circle of twisted glass on the side and within it chromium initials, A. C.; she was going to make her face up.
A door closed and a voice said, 'You'll excuse me bringing you here this early, but I have to be at the office till late...'
'That's all right, that's all right, Mr Graves. Now don't you call this a snug little house?'
He lowered the pistol as Anne turned. She whispered breathlessly, 'Come in here quick.' He obeyed her, he didn't understand, he was still ready to shoot her if she screamed.
She saw the automatic and said, 'Put it away. You'll only get into trouble with that.'
Raven said, 'Your bags are in the kitchen.'
'I know. They've come in by the front door.'
'Gas and electric,' a voice said, 'laid on. Ten pounds down and you sign along the dotted line and move in the furniture.'
A precise voice which went with pince-nez and a high collar and thin flaxen hair said, 'Of course, I shall have to think it over.'
'Come and look upstairs, Mr Graves.'
They could hear them cross the hall and climb the stairs, the agent talking all the time. Raven said, 'I'll shoot if you—'
'Be quiet,' Anne said. 'Don't talk. Listen. Have you those notes? Give me two of them.' When he hesitated she whispered urgently, 'We've got to take a risk.' The agent and Mr Graves were in the best bedroom now. 'Just think of it, Mr Graves,' the agent was saying, 'with flowered chintz.'
'Are the walls sound-proof?'
'By a special process. Shut the door,' the door closed and the agent's voice went thinly, distinctly on, 'and in the passage you couldn't hear a thing. These houses were specially made for family men.'
'And now,' Mr Graves said, 'I should like to see the bathroom.'
'Don't move,' Raven threatened her.
'Oh, put it away,' Anne said, 'and be yourself.' She closed the bathroom door behind her and walked to the door of the bedroom. It opened and the agent said with the immediate gallantry of a man known in all the Nottwich bars,' Well, well, what have we here?'
'I was passing,' Anne said, 'and saw the door open. I'd been meaning to come and see you, but I didn't think you'd be up this early.'
'Always on the spot for a young lady,' the agent said.
'I want to buy this house.'
'Now look here,' Mr Graves said, a young-old man in a black suit who carried about with him in his pale face and irascible air the idea of babies in small sour rooms, of insufficient sleep. 'You can't do that. I'm looking over this house.'
'My husband sent me here to buy it.'
'I'm here first.'
'Have you bought it?'
'I've got to look it over first, haven't I?'
'Here,' Anne said, showing two five-pound notes. 'Now all I have to do...'
'Is sign along the dotted line,' the agent said.
'Give me time,' Mr Graves said. 'I like this house.' He went to the window. 'I like the view.' His pale face stared out at the damaged fields stretching under the fading fog to where the slag-heaps rose along the horizon. 'It's quiet country,' Mr Graves said. 'It'll be good for the children and the wife.'
'I'm sorry,' Anne said, 'but you see I'm ready to pay and sign.'
'References?' the agent said.
'I'll bring them this afternoon.'
'Let me show you another house, Mr Graves.' The agent belched slightly and apologized. 'I'm not used to business before breakfast.'
'No,' Mr Graves said, 'if I can't have this I won't have any.
' Pallid and aggrieved he planted himself in the best bedroom of 'Sleepy Nuik' and presented his challenge to fate, a challenge which he knew from long and bitter experience was always accepted.
'Well,' the agent said, 'you can't have this. First come, first served.'
Mr Graves said, 'Good morning,' carried his pitiful, narrow-chested pride downstairs; at least he could claim that, if he had been always too late for what he really wanted, he had never accepted substitutes.
'I'll come with you to the office,' Anne said, 'straight away,' taking the agent's arm, turning her back on the bathroom where the dark pinched man stood waiting with his pistol, going downstairs into the cold overcast day which smelt to her as sweet as summer because she was safe again.
4
'What did Aladdin say When he came to Pekin?'
Obediently the long shuffling row of them repeated with tired vivacity, bending forward, clapping their knees, 'Chin Chin.' They had been rehearsing for five hours. 'It won't do. It hasn't got any sparkle. Start again, please.'
'What did Aladdin say...'
'How many of you have they killed so far?' Anne said under her breath. 'Chin Chin.'
'Oh, half a dozen.'
'I'm glad I got in at the last minute. A fortnight of this! No thank you.'
'Can't you put some Art into it?' the producer implored them. 'Have some pride. This isn't just any panto.'
'What did Aladdin say...'
'You look washed out,' Anne said.
'You don't look too good yourself.'
'Things happen quick in this place.'
'Once more, girls, and then we'll go on to Miss Maydew's scene.'
'What did Aladdin say When he came to Pekin?'
'You won't think that when you've been here a week.' Miss Maydew sat sideways in the front row with her feet up on the next stall. She was in tweeds and had a golf-and-grouse-moor air. Her real name was Binns, and her father was Lord Fordhaven. She said in a voice of penetrating gentility to Alfred Bleek, 'I said I won't be presented.'