“It was discussed, wasn’t it?”
She half-turned. “What was?”
Her smile was a little lop-sided, he noticed, lifting the left-hand corner of her mouth a fraction more than the right.
“Leaving—while I was asleep.”
Her look was more serious. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s a guess. But not all that clever a one. Billie did her best to get away when I chased her. And then was walking on past here until you called. I suppose she still hoped to ditch me somehow. I could hear her going on at you last night. Wasn’t that what she was trying to talk you into?”
She turned back to the primus stove, without answering. Neil said:
“Why is she like that?”
“There’s a lot of sense in it. Things have changed. You can’t be expected to trust strangers.”
“But how can you ever come to trust anyone, if you refuse to get to know them?” Lucy did not reply to that, either. “Would you trust me, now?”
She gave a slow nod. “I think so.”
“But Billie doesn’t?”
“She’s more cautious than I am. She’s probably right to be.”
“It’s nothing to do with caution. You know that.”
She looked at him across the frying pan.
“What do you mean?”
“It’s wanting to keep you to herself—jealousy of anyone else being on the scene.”
“That’s silly!”
“I don’t think so. She sees herself as the protector and organizer. She tells you what to do. And she doesn’t want any competition.”
Lucy stared at him. Her look, for the first time, had resentment in it.
“Billie’s my friend. And I don’t need protecting or organizing—not by anybody.”
The comment was pointed, and Neil realized he had gone too far. He was silent for some moments, then said:
“At any rate, you didn’t let her persuade you to go away. I’m glad.”
“I didn’t think there was enough reason. We’d have had to find a new place. It would mean a lot of cleaning up and doing. Too much trouble.”
She spoke with indifference, real or assumed. The latter, he hoped, but could not be sure. Their eyes met, and at least the unfriendly look had gone. She said:
“Your breakfast’s ready.”
• • •
During the next few days Neil had to put up with a good deal of harassment from Billie. She was constantly and acidly critical—of things he said, his appearance, habits, practically everything he did.
He realized she was deliberately trying to make him angry and did his best to disregard it, but now and then she succeeded in getting under his skin. One such occasion was when she called him a pig, the word spat out, for failing to wipe his feet properly on the hall mat, and bringing in dirt.
“Look at that!” She pointed to a dab of leafy mud on the carpet. “Really piggish. And when Lucy’s spent hours, cleaning it. It’s disgusting.”
What irritated him was not so much the reproach, nor even the bitterly contemptuous tone, as the fact that Lucy was present; and though she said it didn’t matter she had, in fact, shampooed the carpet that morning. Nor had she been able to restrain a momentary look of annoyance, which Billie had also seen with evident satisfaction. The abuse was intended as a reminder of the time when there had been just the two of them, before he blundered on to the scene.
On that occasion as on others Neil managed to bite back the urge to retaliate: he simply apologised to Lucy and held his peace. While he knew where he was with Billie—quite simply she wanted him out—he was not at all sure about Lucy. What was fairly clear was that any sign of aggression towards Billie on his part, however provoked, involved the risk of banding the two girls more closely together.
It was good advice he gave himself, but not easy to follow. He was thinking about it in bed one night, wondering how long he was going to be able to keep his cool, when he heard the noise outside. It shattered the silence, a loud snarling cough that sent a shiver down his spine. A moment later it came again, louder and nearer. He got up, threw on a dressing gown, and went down to the girls’ room.
They were awake and had a light on. They looked scared, but probably he did, too. Lucy said:
“It woke you as well? What was it?”
“I don’t know.” He hesitated. “It might. . . .”
“What?”
“I was thinking about the Zoo animals. I imagine most of them died of hunger when there was no-one to feed them. But the odd one may have escaped.”
The coughing roar came again; it sounded as though it was directly beneath the window.
“What sort of animal?” Lucy asked.
“A big cat, probably. Leopard, maybe.” He managed a smile. “I’m not very well up on animal noises.”
“It can’t get in here,” Billie said, “whatever it is.”
“No.”
For once there was no feeling of hostility. They sat in uneasy silence, listening. Minutes passed and nothing happened. Neil was thinking they might as well go back to bed when there was another sound in the distance, this time a howl of pain. It was repeated a couple of times; then there was quiet again. Lucy looked at him, in query.
“Making its kill,” Neil said.
“Of what?”
Billie answered. “A dog,” she said flatly.
Neil nodded. “It can’t hurt us. Go back to sleep,” he said.
In the morning Neil investigated. He did not have to look far. The carcass, or what was left of it, lay at the corner of the street. Most had been eaten; only the hindquarters remained. It had been a dog, all right, but not the small terrier he had imagined. The hindquarters were of something big and hairy—a sheepdog possibly.
Suppressing nausea, Neil dragged the remains into a nearby garden and left them out of sight behind a bush. Scavengers, the rats in particular, would soon dispose of them. He kept a wary eye open on the way back to the house. Anything capable of killing a dog of that size was as likely to attack a human being. Presumably it was not hungry at the moment, but the thought did not completely reassure him.
After washing he gave the girls a brief account. He did not mention how big the dog had been, but he did say:
“I think we ought to have some sort of protection, a weapon, in case it comes back.”
Billie automatically began pouring scorn on the idea: there was no reason to think it would come back—they had never heard it before—and it hunted by night, and they were safe in the house, anyway.
Neil ignored her, and spoke to Lucy:
“There was a revolver, and bullets, in the place where I lived. I didn’t have any use for them then, so I left them there. But I think it might not be a bad idea to go over and pick them up.”
Billie said, with contempt: “It really did scare you!”
He was looking at Lucy. She nodded slightly.
“Yes. I think that’s a good idea.”
It was the first time she had come out positively on his side. Billie was silenced. He said:
“I’ll go over there right away.”
• • •
Neil found the revolver in the drawer where he had left it. There were three boxes of bullets, two sealed, one opened but nearly full. He filled the barrel and stowed the rest away. More than enough for the present; and if he did need more it should not be difficult to find a gunsmith. The Yellow Pages would help him to locate one.
If he did, it occurred to him, he could also pick up other weapons. A shot-gun would be useful for killing game, if they went out into the country. He had a sudden feeling of optimism about that. If Lucy had sided with him against Billie once, she might do again.
He came out on to the landing with the gun in his hand. Portrait oil paintings lined the hall below and asc
ended the wall of the broad oak staircase. There was a large window at the top, but the day was grey outside and the faces looked shadowy and unreal. They had been very important people, no doubt, in those days when things like class and rank and wealth had meaning.
One of the nearer ones, he thought, resembled Billie slightly—a woman with a pointed face and staring eyes. He realized he had not yet tried firing the gun. He raised it at arm’s length and drew a bead on the glimmering forehead. The crash, and the jerk of the weapon forcing his hand up, startled him. He could not see whether he had hit the picture, and did not stay to look. His ears were deafened, and he felt a bit ashamed of himself as he put the gun in his pocket.
He went through to his own old quarters, where there were things he wanted to collect: his cassette player, which was better than the one the girls had, and various items of food to add to the communal stock, including Swiss chocolates he thought Lucy might like. He filled the rucksack with what he needed.
It was strange being back. He remembered The Wind in the Willows, and Mole’s wretchedness when he took Ratty back to his abandoned house. This place had never really been a home to him, but seeing it again produced a sense of dreariness and depression.
There seemed to be dust everywhere. There probably always had been: he was viewing it through eyes that had become re-accustomed to feminine standards of cleanliness. The large spider’s web occupying one corner, on the other hand, was definitely new. But it was not those things, nor the cold grey ashes in the hearth, which made him marvel at the thought that he had once lived here, and believed himself reasonably content. It was the silence, the crushing awareness of solitude, which did that. He felt a compulsion to break the stillness—to say something, anything. He found himself calling Lucy’s name.
His voice sounded like that of a stranger; and the silence which settled back seemed even heavier, more pervading. In it, the thought that suddenly came to him seemed to ring like a cracked discordant bell. How long had he been away from the girls—two hours, three? The first time, anyway, for more than a few minutes since he had joined them. Would they be there when he returned?
Night after night he had heard them talking, their voices low and indistinguishable. He had not discussed it with Lucy again, but there was every chance that Billie had been plugging the same theme—arguing the case for their giving him the slip and going away together. And was it unreasonable that in the end she should have prevailed? He had no clear idea of what Lucy felt about him; but when he criticized Billie to her, she had been quick to resent it, telling him Billie was her friend. A dominant friend: it was Billie who had organized concealment, Billie who had decided they should make no response to the bell-ringing.
The very thing about which he had been so pleased—Lucy’s agreeing with him about getting the revolver—could have been a calculated deceit: the means by which they could secure his absence from the house long enough to give them a good start; and in daylight. They could be miles away by now, lost beyond hope of rediscovery.
Abandoning the rucksack, Neil raced out of the house. The car stood outside, where he had left it over a week before. He flung himself into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The starter whirred, but nothing happened; and the same at the second attempt. He remembered that petrol had been low—that he had been meaning to get more but had left it while he made his search on foot through Chelsea.
A bicycle he had occasionally used was propped in the hall. One of the tyres was flat; he found his fingers all thumbs as he fitted the pump to the valve. It seemed ages before the tyre was inflated, and he could get on the bicycle and pedal away.
The sense of loss, the misery, was much worse than on that first morning after meeting her. He had a chest-pinching sense of desperation, a sickness in the stomach, an overwhelming need to gulp air. It was partly physical, then entirely so. As he passed the vacant hulk of a Green Line bus, halted forever outside the Brompton Oratory, cramp struck, a crippling pain that bit into his side. He had to dismount and wait, doubled over, for it to go away.
The enforced delay gave him a chance to think more clearly, despite the pain. He saw Lucy again in his mind’s eye and realized how absurd his imagining had been. It did not matter about Billie; he knew Lucy would not have betrayed him like that. The agony of cramp had ebbed. He straightened up and took a tentative breath, followed by a deeper one. Then he remounted the bicycle and rode on, no longer in a hurry.
He met Billie first, at the top of the stairs. She said, with a note of disgust:
“You’re back sooner than we thought.”
He said indifferently: “Am I? Where’s Lucy?”
She came out of the kitchen: all blue, in a guernsey with slacks of a lighter shade. She looked at him, past Billie.
“You’re back!”
The words were the same, the intonation very different. Neil grinned cheerfully at her.
“Yes. I’m back.”
• • •
Billie next morning went foraging on her own, and returned excited over a discovery. She burst into the sitting room where Neil and Lucy were having coffee, and talked about it volubly. She had been exploring westwards along the river bank and had found, in a small house in the poor area around Lots Road, an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine. As far as she could tell, it was in perfect working order. There was a pile of mending on the table beside it which showed that it had been in use.
Neil gathered, as she went on, that this was meant to represent the fulfilment of a long-standing desire of Lucy’s. Apparently dress-making had been a hobby of hers in the past; and on some occasion she had expressed frustration to Billie over the fact that, while sewing machines were available for the taking, they were all useless without electrical power.
It would be easy enough, Billie suggested, to bring it over in a wheelbarrow: the house was not much more than a quarter of a mile away. She looked at Lucy expectantly; like a dog, Neil thought, expecting to be patted for performing a trick.
Lucy said: “Well, thank you, Billie, but. . . .”
“I could get it this afternoon.”
“I’m not sure it would be worth it, until things are more settled.”
“More settled? How?”
“If we’re going to move out into the country eventually. . . . I think Neil’s probably right about that. We ought to start taking a longer view of things—plan for the future. And we’ll need to travel as lightly as possible when we do move. For that matter, it probably won’t be difficult to find an old sewing machine outside London. There were two in my village that I know of.”
Neil waited for Billie’s reaction, expecting a heated argument at the least. But she merely stared at Lucy in silence for some moments; then said, in a quieter voice than usual:
“I think I’ll make some tea.”
She walked heavily away towards the kitchen. Neil watched her go very cheerfully.
11
BILLIE WAS NOT ABASHED FOR long. That evening after supper she came into the sitting room from the kitchen to find Neil playing a Stones tape on the recorder, and launched a bitter attack. He had no consideration, she said: he was always playing some horrible row or other. She was sick and tired of the Rolling Stones, and the rest of them. And he might at least turn the volume down.
As far as Neil could see, Billie didn’t really like music at all. She had a few tapes which she occasionally put on, of fife and drum music and Scottish ballads, and she would sit tapping her foot throughout, just out of time. He put his hand to the volume switch, and then changed his mind. Lucy quite liked the Stones; he saw no reason why they both should be deprived because Billie was tone-deaf.
He said as much, and the argument started. It raged till Lucy came in, when they both appealed to her. She said:
“We could have it a bit lower, Neil, couldn’t we?”
He was willing to oblige her, and the volum
e was too high unless you were listening by yourself. He turned it down, and was rewarded by a smile from Lucy. Billie, though, was not satisfied. She turned from music to the fact that he had not helped with the washing up. Neil said hotly:
“I offered. Lucy told me to go and sit down.”
“And you were quick enough to do it!”
“I’d rather he did. There isn’t room for three of us out there,” Lucy said.
“I don’t see why he shouldn’t take his turn.”
“Does it matter about turns? Look, I’ll do it by myself in future. I’d rather.”
That didn’t suit Billie, either. “No, you won’t. I just don’t see why he should get away with things.”
Lucy managed to calm things down, but another row flared up later when Neil said something which Billie took to be a criticism of North Country people. That one raged until bedtime, and started afresh the following morning.
The difference, Neil recognized, lay on his side. Previously he had put up with Billie’s criticisms and insults, out of fear that Lucy might side with her and yield to her pressure to abandon him. He was confident now that that wouldn’t happen, and saw no reason why Billie should rant at him unchallenged.
Lucy made it plain that she detested these scenes, and did her best to stop them. Neil himself did make some effort not to get involved, but without much success. The trouble was that Billie had a knack of needling him which he found unendurable. He found everything about her—appearance, voice, the way she stamped across the room so that the floor boards creaked—intensely irritating. The detestation, he was fairly sure, was mutual.
Hostilities dragged on for days, and culminated in the most blazing row of all, which started quite innocently. Billie during supper spoke of going next day to the bookshop in the King’s Road: she was running short of reading matter. Neil, bearing in mind an appeal Lucy had made to him earlier to keep the peace, was doing his best to preserve harmony. He suggested they might all go along: there were some books he wanted, too.
The ridiculous starting point was that he, naturally, said “books” in the southern way, with the short vowel as opposed to the long diphthong Billie had used. She chose to think that he was correcting her accent, trying to be superior, and said so. The fact that he had been bending over backwards not to cause trouble made Neil angrier than usual. In no time the battle was underway, with Lucy’s appeals and remonstrances falling on two sets of deaf ears. This time no holds at all were barred, and they gave full vent to their loathing for one another. The verbal battle raged on until Lucy suddenly got up and said, in a strained trembling voice quite unlike her normal tone: