The Japanese Girl & Other Stories

  ‘Another girl was attacked on Sunday,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Oh?’ said Morgan. ‘ Didn’t know that. It wasn’t in the papers, was it?’

  ‘No, we were able to keep it quiet.’

  ‘Did he get her this time or did she get away?’

  ‘This girl – this young woman – put up more of a struggle and was able to give us a better description. We’ve kept it quiet while we made inquiries. We’ve visited nearly everyone with this style of long hair in Crowchester.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Morgan. ‘And now you’ve come to me, eh?’

  ‘That’s right, Mr Morgan, in a manner of speaking.’

  ‘I was away all Sunday. Didn’t get back to Crowchester until after midnight. So it can’t have been me.’

  ‘This time we don’t need to bother about alibis. This girl – they had a real fight – she says she scratched the man all down one arm, elbow to wrist, she says. So this time it’s more a question of finding a man with scratch marks.’

  ‘I see,’ said Morgan thoughtfully. ‘And who’ve you been to? It must have meant quite a lot of calls, all those lads with long hair.’

  ‘Yes, it has.’

  ‘And you haven’t found him yet?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  Morgan glanced at Peggy and then at the policemen. ‘So what you want –’

  ‘If you’d mind taking off your coat, Mr Morgan, and rolling up your sleeves.’

  Morgan sighed and shrugged. ‘Oh, well, if you feel like that. But I think it’s a bit thick. I mean me, trying to attack girls …’

  He took off his coat, slowly took out his enormous cuff-links and as slowly rolled up the purple big-cuffed sleeves of his shirt. His arms were rather thin and pale but there were no scratches on them.

  ‘Satisfied?’

  Taylor stepped back. ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘So now maybe we can get on with our supper, eh?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I think you might have come at a better time, anyway.’

  ‘We’re making an intensive search. I’m afraid it’s not always possible to pick on times.’

  ‘Well, I wish you luck,’ said Morgan. ‘It beats me why they do these things. I mean, it isn’t as if women were hard to get –’

  ‘Oh, Mr Bristow,’ said Sergeant Taylor, as Bristow was about to go back to the table.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘While we’re here, might we just look at your forearms? It’s just a question of checking up.’

  ‘I’ve not got long hair.’

  ‘No, we know. It’s just trying to see all possibilities. Just checking up.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ said Peggy. ‘Look at his hair – it’s going thin on the top! You must be crazy!’

  ‘We have to try to check every possibility, Mrs Bristow. Now, sir, if you wouldn’t mind …’

  Bristow had gone very white and he made no move at all. Sergeant Taylor gently took his coat sleeve. Bristow pulled away but Taylor followed him. Bristow was wearing a short-sleeved shirt and the coat slid easily up. All the way down his forearm were long red scratches.

  There was a gasp from Peggy. Bristow stood there swaying.

  ‘Well!’ said Morgan. ‘Stone the crows! I thought that wig in the window looked a bit messed up on Monday!’

  Bristow put his hands to his face and sat down in the nearest chair.

  ‘We shall have to ask you to come with us to the station,’ said Taylor.

  ‘Why, what’s he done?’ shouted Peggy. ‘What are you saying he’s done? What’s he done?’

  ‘Well, Mrs Bristow, I think we have to work that out, don’t we?’

  ‘Now, now, Peggy, take it easy,’ said Morgan. ‘I reckon there’s been some mistake. It’ll all be cleared up in no time.’

  ‘I must ask you to come to the station,’ said Taylor to Bristow. ‘You can make a statement then.’

  ‘It’s ridiculous!’ said Peggy. ‘Downright ridiculous. Where did you get those scratches, Walter? Where’d you get them?’

  Bristow made no move. Then he slowly withdrew his hands from his face and stood up. Without anybody speaking he went slowly to the door and, with Sergeant Taylor beside him, went out. He did not once look back.

  Constable Spinner said: ‘Would you like to come along, Mrs Bristow?’

  ‘I’ll bring her in my car,’ said Morgan. ‘You go ahead. I’ve got my car outside.’

  Spinner went out and Peggy and Morgan stood there in silence listening to the shutting of the front door, the whirr of a self-starter and then the drone of a car pulling away.

  ‘Stone the crows,’ said Morgan again. ‘ I’d never’ve believed it of him! Poor old Walter! D’you want to go down, Peggy? D’you want to go down to the station. It’ll look better. I’d never’ve believed it of him.’

  He put his hand on her shoulder but she drew sharply away. ‘Don’t touch me!’

  ‘Why, what’s wrong with me? I wasn’t in it!’

  She was glaring at him. ‘I’ll go down, but not with you. Not ever again with you. I’ll go in our own car! And you can clear out!’

  ‘What d’you mean? Don’t take it out on me! What’ve I done?’

  ‘It’s our fault! D’you know that? Our fault! Our fault! Our fault! Our fault! Get out of here and out of the shop tomorrow! Get out of this town! I never want to see you again!’

  He stared at her, and realized that at least she couldn’t be reasoned with tonight. He picked up his jacket and put it on, ran a hand through his hair and went to the front door, which she was holding open.

  ‘I suppose you realize that –’

  ‘Get out!’ she shouted at him. ‘Get out! Get out!’

  The Old Boys

  Kendrick hadn’t been near his old school for upwards of fifteen years, but an appointment in the town and an hour or so to spare before the next train out gave him the chance to walk up and look around.

  When he turned in at the gates he expected to see the place swarming with boys, and it took a minute or two to work out the date and to realize that the school had broken up probably yesterday or the day before. You get out of the habit of remembering. There were only two figures in sight and they were gardeners mowing the headmaster’s lawn; and there was a solitary lop-eared dog chasing the pigeons around Newcome’s Tower.

  But it didn’t matter much; perhaps it was for the best, Kendrick thought, as he walked in past the porter’s lodge and the chapel. Alone like this, without today’s hefty youths milling all round, it was easier to think back to what it had been like long ago.

  New Field, for instance, where the First XI cricket was played; there didn’t seem a blade of grass different. He remembered the one time he’d made a decent score: forty-seven against Stanmore – then that fool Smithfield had called him for a short run. The only occasion he’d ever been near fifty. The number of times he’d raced round the edge of this field, too, nearly late for locking up – there was fire and brimstone if you ran across it.

  Up there was the window of his last study-dormitory. When it was hot in the evening you could just squeeze yourself out on that tiny balcony and be full in the sun. The setting sun struck fire from the window today; he wondered who inhabited that room now, whether the iron bed still had one leg shorter than the other three so that you had to wedge it so as not to rock in your sleep. And Sellers Quad; the dismal parades there as a new boy; the Stinks Lab on the other side.

  The formative years, they were supposed to be. Well, well, he didn’t know whether they’d formed him much. He’d gone along, free-wheeling most of the time, just getting by, enjoying himself on the whole; but he’d had a lot more fun since. It was piffle to talk about.

  The bright shafts of sunlight were casting long shadows between the sham Gothic arches, and it looked to him as he was about to turn away that there was someone standing at the corner of Small Quad. He veered over that way and saw there was.

  The odd thing was that the figure had something quite fa
miliar about it, but he scoffed at himself for thinking so. After all these years you didn’t suddenly bump into a man who’d … Well, it certainly wasn’t one of the boys, anyway. A master probably. Out of the sun it was easier to see.

  Rather a big chap in a long dark overcoat and a green felt hat, with a pipe in the corner of his mouth. It seemed nearly like two lifetimes since those days, and as he got closer Kendrick still told himself he was wildly mistaken. Yet why do some men grow up and broaden and go grey and still look exactly unmistakably the same as they do at eighteen? Perhaps it’s not so much that they grow middle-aged as that they have been middle-aged all the time. Clamp was such a one. He …

  The man in the dark coat finished stubbing a finger into his pipe and moved off; his figure disappeared suddenly in the shadow of the cloister and might never have been there. Kendrick frowned. Then he saw it again.

  ‘Clamp,’ he called. ‘I say, Clamp!’

  The figure stopped and turned. It took its pipe out of its mouth and stared.

  ‘It is Clamp!’ Kendrick exclaimed as he came up. ‘Well, my saints, what a chance!’

  Clamp narrowed his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t think I know you, sir …’ He hesitated. ‘Or it can’t be … is it Kendrick?’

  ‘Right first time,’ Kendrick laughed, and they shook hands. Clamp’s hand was cold and clammy and had no grip at all. He had begun to smile but the smile had withered on his face.

  Kendrick said: ‘I don’t know what the chances are against this happening! What on earth brings you here this afternoon of all afternoons? I haven’t seen you since I left school, and I’ve only been back here twice in all these years!’

  ‘It’s not perhaps such a coincidence,’ Clamp said stiffly. ‘I come quite often. I live only a mile or two away. Perhaps you didn’t know that, what?’

  ‘I certainly didn’t. I live in London. I’m carrying on my father’s firm – estate agency, you know – and had to come down here about the Compton estate which we’re handling … And you? You’re fatter, of course, but I’d know you anywhere. You haven’t really changed.’

  They began to walk together along the cloister and then out of Small Quad and beside the Second XV football pitch. Kendrick had not been a close friend of Clamp at school – a rather intense, humourless type – but after the creeping melancholy of his own company he was delighted to find someone of his own year to talk to. He ignored Clamp’s cold manner and tight-drawn mouth and chatted on about Staggers their housemaster who had died ten years ago, about Mortimer who had done so well in oil, about Press and Harris who had been killed in an accident and Valentine who had made the England rugger team and now was apparently in some dead-end job in Hove.

  The sun had gone and the twilight was shorter than usual because of the heavy clouds blowing up from the west. Clamp, Kendrick thought, might have been a bit middle-aged at eighteen; it was equally true that at forty-six he didn’t seem to have lost his schoolboy words and mannerisms. He was behaving now like a sulky boy. Or perhaps it was more than that. His knuckles were quite white where they gripped his pipe.

  ‘Is something the matter, Clamp? Have I said something out of place?’

  Clamp stopped. ‘Mean to say you don’t remember?’

  ‘Remember? What?’

  ‘The last days of our last term, Kendrick. Before we both left the old school for good.’

  Kendrick stared. ‘Not a thing. Should I?’

  ‘Mean to say you don’t remember about Veronica Fry?’

  Kendrick’s greying eyebrows came together in a frown. ‘ Veronica Fry? I remember the name … But of course! She was that glamorous town piece we were both taking out that last term!’

  ‘She was the chemist’s daughter,’ said Clamp coldly.

  ‘Dear little Veronica. How that brings back memories!’ Kendrick sighed. ‘Well, well. Oh, yes, of course, we had words about her, didn’t we.’

  ‘We did. You called me a tin-pot Romeo and a dirty skunk!’

  ‘Did I?’ Kendrick chuckled. ‘I say, that was going it a bit, wasn’t it? Tell me about her, I remember the row but forget the exact details.’

  ‘You said I was behaving badly towards her by not inviting her to that Breaking-up Concert on the Wednesday. You said I’d been making up to her all term and was then just going to walk out of her life. You said I must be ashamed of her and, just to prove you were not, you were going to invite her to the concert yourself!’

  ‘Ah, yes. Go on, go on. I remember I read you a bit of a lecture, didn’t I.’

  ‘If calling me a dirty skunk can be called a lecture. Don’t you remember the rest?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said: ‘‘All right, if you think I’m a dirty skunk, we’ll meet tomorrow morning, behind the chapel, and I’ll teach you which of us is the skunk!’’ ’

  ‘Yes, I do remember now. Funny to look back …’

  Clamp’s story had indeed brought back many memories. Discipline had been fairly lax under Staggers just before he retired, and as prefects that last term or so they’d been able to do much as they liked. Of course it had all been painfully innocent and very respectable. ‘Taking out a town girl’ hardly described the meetings in a bun shop, the stolen half-hours on the river, the rivalries and pairings that took place at the School Dance which was given every December in the Town Hall But at the time it had all been breathless and dashing.

  ‘And what happened?’ Kendrick said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘About our fight behind the chapel?’

  ‘You never turned up.’

  Kendrick roared with laughter. ‘Of course! I remember now! Did you ask Veronica to the concert after all?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I didn’t go. I suppose it was a bit of a trick, old man, really. You see, I never had the least intention of asking her to the concert, or anywhere else – not because I was ashamed to, or thought you were, but because I’d found another girl and wanted to take her to the flicks instead. Veronica was dead set on going to the concert, and I was afraid I’d be let in for taking her if I didn’t goad you into smart action. It was obvious you were getting a bit tired of her, too, and I had to make you keener again. Well, there’s nothing like a little rivalry … I find it in my profession constantly; two people after the same house, as it were; it makes all the difference. I wonder you didn’t tumble to it because if I’d really wanted to take her I shouldn’t have lectured you on doing the straight thing!’

  ‘And the next morning?’

  ‘I remember did set my alarm for six. I was quite willing to punch your nose if you wanted me to. But lying in bed I thought, what price glory! I’m going to have another hour in bed. And I did!’

  ‘You never turned up!’

  They had crossed beside the cricket pitch and now stood in the shadow of the school chapel. Clamp stopped. ‘You never turned up,’ he said again.

  ‘Well, there was another reason. This other girl I’d dated – I wish I could remember her name – Mary something, was it? – she’d quite caught my fancy, and I was meeting her again that last afternoon before I caught the train home. And I thought: what a fool I’ll look turning up for my appointment with a black eye and a swollen nose. I was rather vain about my looks in those days!’

  Clamp wrenched his arm free. ‘You never turned up and you never explained; I never saw you again from that day to this. That’s what I call the act of an absolute rotter – a dirty skunk, in fact!’

  ‘Oh, come off it, man,’ Kendrick exclaimed, irritated himself now. ‘ Keep the thing in proportion. It all happened twenty-eight years ago. That’s more than a quarter of a century. I’m prepared to admit that you’ve a marvellous memory but –’

  ‘My memory’s quite a normal one. It shows what a shallow cad you are that you should have forgotten all about it!’

  They had come to a stop again in the shadow of the trees. Kendrick shrugged his shoulders. ‘ Well, really, if that’s the way you feel I think it’s time you went
to see a psychiatrist. I’m really sorry for you. I never heard a man talk such damned rot in my life, and I’ll wish you good afternoon.’

  ‘Wait!’ Clamp caught his arm as he turned. ‘It may be a quarter of a century since I issued that challenge but it still stands! And you’ve insulted me afresh over and over again this afternoon. Here we are, in just the spot behind the chapel, where we agreed to meet. Now put up your hands!’

  Kendrick stared at the other in incredulous astonishment. It was now dusk. There was no one about, and the gardeners if they were still working were right round the other side of the school.

  ‘I’ll do nothing of the sort. Take your hands off me, you silly man!’

  Clamp’s answer was to release him and give him a hearty painful thump on the ear. Kendrick saw red. He swung round-arm with his fist and caught Clamp on the side of the jaw. Clamp hit him in the eye.

  They closed, two middle-aged portly men, out of temper and out of condition. They grappled like elderly dinosaurs, broke apart, came together again; then they fell into the bushes with an enormous thump and flurry and crackle of leaves.

  In half a minute the years had rolled away; Clamp had Kendrick by the arm and was trying to twist it; but Kendrick heaved Clamp off him and fell on him as he tried to rise. Stertorously they rolled over.

  Then as they struggled another figure appeared from round the corner of the chapel. Although the school had broken up yesterday the Head had not yet discarded his gown.

  They both saw him at the same moment. They both stopped fighting. Then Clamp muttered ‘ cave!’

  They both scrambled up to go. The Head had not seen them yet but he was coming in their direction. Kendrick moved to duck towards the chapel alley, but Clamp caught his arm. ‘ No, that way’s blocked! Follow me.’

  Clutching battered hats, they crawled panting through the shrubbery towards a five-foot brick wall.

  ‘Who’s that!’ said a voice behind them. ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Quick, this leads into Goodwin’s Lane,’ Clamp whispered. ‘ Then we’re safe enough …’