Mr Bowling Buys a Newspaper Read online

  ‘Oh, Hell,’ he muttered, and Daphne leaned forward and beamed.

  ‘’Mm?’ she said. She had, he noticed, eyes which were such a light brown that they were almost yellow. She had high cheekbones and did her hair in brown knots.

  Queenie came dashing up with a tall girl whose home was in Singapore. They had in tow two gentlemen who were in rather advanced stages, betrayed by glazed eyes.

  ‘Come and dance,’ they all cried at him. ‘Jetty’s got nobody to dance with, Bill …!’

  He went and danced with Jetty who was called that on account of the way her behind stuck out. She danced on her toes, and when she danced she wore an over-bright smile, as if she was concentrating. She was in the Fire Service, and said she had been chucked out of a fifth floor window that morning by the boys ‘into a blanket, of course, those boys, they just won’t leave me alone!’

  ‘Really?’ he smiled. He became aware that Mr Farthing was in a shadowy corner, watching him.

  ‘Are you doing a war job? If I’m not being impertinent?’

  ‘Not at the moment.’

  ‘Shall you be called up? I’m not …?’

  ‘Grade Three,’ he said a little coldly.

  She quickly sensed something which made her say quickly:

  ‘I didn’t mean to be impertinent …! These people who send white feathers to people, and give them to men in mufti during their leave, I do think it’s cheek, they ought …!’ She didn’t finish sentences. ‘Don’t you? I mean …!’

  They danced on the red lines of the squash court. The band was up in the gallery. It played an old one: ‘If I should fall in love again, I’d fall in love with you again.’ Then it played another old one and a chap crooned into a megaphone: ‘Johnny Pedlar …!’ He asked her to sit out, but she looked hopeful, in the way he was so tired of, so he took Jetty to the money machines. They shoved in sixpences and pulled the handle. A shower of sixpences fell out first time, and he gave them to her. She was fascinated and started to lose the lot, chug, the handle went, chug, chug, chug. After that they had some Scotch Ale. Mrs Farthing smiled at them. She could hardly see over the counter, because of her deformity. ‘Isn’t she sweet?’ Jetty said. Jetty had no sex-appeal, you just couldn’t imagine anything, it would be impossible. She knew all about everyone at the Heights, she lived in a one-room flat herself there. ‘First floor.’ Mr Farthing hovered away over there by the dart board, watching. ‘The Farthings live in the basement,’ Jetty said. ‘But he spends a lot of his time up in that shop on the entrance level. I don’t know what he gets up to in there! Mrs Farthing says she never goes in there!’ What she was trying to say was that Daphne sometimes went in there.

  ‘Daphne looks too sensible,’ he remarked.

  ‘Sometimes it’s bread-and-butter,’ she said.

  ‘Blackmail?’ he said.

  ‘Sort-of.’

  ‘There are plenty of jobs in war-time.’

  ‘Do you think people do wrong things because they want to, and for no other reason?’ she said.

  The remark upset him strangely. He said he didn’t, but he thought that he did, really. He excused himself and left her abruptly, passing quickly through a ping pong room and a billiard room, where some of his guests had congregated and were having a good time. He slipped out and made for one of the lifts. He noticed that Mr Farthing was still watching him.

  He went up in the lift and returned to his flat. The door was open still and various people were collecting hats and coats.

  ‘I’m bored stiff,’ he told himself.

  But he entered, smiling brightly. A girl in ambulance clothes was bent double with laughter about what another girl in ambulance clothes was saying about her station officer. ‘The airs she gives herself, who does she think she is—the Queen of Sheba?’

  A tall, thin gentleman leaned drunkenly up against the wall, holding a cluster of tin helmets and gas masks and waiting.

  ‘We … ought to go, Celia,’ he managed.

  Later he managed:

  ‘Celia … we really ought to go?’

  When they had all gone, he stood amongst the debris feeling bored to death and completely alone.

  He sat sorrowfully and wearily down at the piano, which was littered with empty bottles and dirty glasses, feeling self-pitying and sentimental.

  He played a little Schubert and thought:

  ‘I really am a tedious fellow.’

  Whenever he went in or out of the Heights, Mr Farthing was somewhere in the shadows or recesses, watching him. Very occasionally they said good morning, in cold voices, over-bright with secret dislike, which was mutual. Though Mr Bowling only noticed Mr Farthing in the same sense that he now and then noticed a greengrocer or a postman, thinking vaguely: ‘Don’t like that fellow particularly,’ then dismissing him from his mind until next time, and then dismissing him once again. He had a faint notion that Mr Farthing resented his Harris tweed, for he looked dusty and dowdy himself, always in dreary black, and his gaze swept Mr Bowling’s neat figure with contempt. Sometimes Mr Bowling would sit in the entrance lounge having a bit of think. Farthing would be dusting his little shop window, or the ornamental horses stuck there. Mrs Farthing’s voice would come from the restaurant door opposite, going: ‘Oh, and Sadie, see if we are entitled to any liver, or offal of some kind, will you? I don’t know what we’re going to do, I don’t want to close down unless we can help it.’

  ‘Yes, madam.’

  ‘And I suppose I daren’t mention onions?’

  ‘I’ll see if I can get one. Mum might sell you one, if not.’

  ‘Would she? Thank you so much. Then I’ll give them rabbit stew again, we’ll call it hare-sauté.’ Her laugh rang out. ‘Ha ha ha! Hare-sauté?’

  ‘Very good, madam. What about a spot of tripe?’ But madam was still laughing. She came out and hobbled past Mr Bowling going, ‘hare-sauté, ha ha ha!’ She didn’t so much as glance at Mr Farthing, who was watching slyly through the shop glass, rather like a gorilla in its cage waiting for bananas. Mrs Farthing went along through the little garden affair that had been built, which had neat wooden seats all round it, and which also had dog messes all round it, dogs were a problem in London flats. Porters wandered to and fro, different faces each week, owing to the call up, they were old men and boys now.

  Mr Bowling liked to sit there when autumn grew colder, enjoying the sense of movement, and reading any letter which may have come for him, by the electric fire there.

  One autumn morning, he sat and read a letter from Mrs Nandle, which had embossed headings at the top announcing: ‘The Rookery, Knockholt.’

  Even as he sat and told himself he would not go near the place, he knew that he was going, and presently Mr Farthing was in a position to overhear him telephoning Godfrey Davis’s for a drive-yourself car, and enquiring about petrol coupons.

  Mr Bowling put back the receiver and thought:

  ‘I don’t know why I am going down there for the weekend. I’m used to this place now, I quite like it, it’s like home. Well, perhaps it will make me look forward to coming back?’

  He thought it was as good a reason as any for going anywhere at all. But when, having got back, he stood staring at his empty flat, he thought:

  ‘Oh, my God, here I am again? Now what?’

  And then he thought:

  ‘What is the matter with me?’

  CHAPTER XI

  MR NANDLE was perfectly delighted when he heard that Mr Bowling had accepted the invitation for a weekend at The Rookery, chiefly because Mrs Nandle said, in the same tones that she said, ‘Have you wiped your boots, Delius?’ that Mr Bowling would never accept. She said if she knew anything at all, she knew that Mr Bowling was extremely sophisticated and led the fast London life. ‘He’s so go-ahead, Delius,’ she said. ‘And you’re so slow!’ After that, she said once again that he never made friends. She said Mr Bowling would be bored stiff at The Rookery. ‘What on earth shall we do with him?’

  She discussed it with her f
riend whose nickname was Niggs. Her real name was Miss Souter, she was one of the original Souters, pronounced Suiter, her family had been concerned in the relief of Ladysmith, ‘Quite a long time ago now, of course,’ Delius Nandle explained to visitors, ‘one of her uncles, I believe it was.’ Delius stood by the fire when there were guests, wearing old-fashioned knickerbockers, and fulsome shooting jackets, and pullovers which Mrs Nandle knitted for him, they had huge ribs in them and were usually yellow. He called her Fairy though there was something weighty and bespectacled and formal about her. Very occasionally, she put on some blue trousers with creases down the sides. They had an Airedale with a great, grinning face, called Pots.

  Pots always knew when visitors were expected, and he grinned even more, because he was the medium whereby the family got over their shyness, bending all the time to feed him and pet him, and say what a good ratter he was. When the weather, as a topic, had faded out, there was always Pots, and Delius was quite in order to stoop and say—‘Rats?’ in the middle of tea, and it was quite in order for Pots to let out a bloodcurdling scream, and dive like a bear at the terrified visitor’s feet. Things then went with a swing, Fairy saying apologetically, ‘Oh, Delius, how naughty of you,’ and Miss Souter crying: ‘Oh, that naughty dog, but he is such a wonderful ratter!’ The visitor, snatched from the very arena wherein the Martyrs of Old endured similar agonised moments, got out a twisted smile of joy, mentally resolving never to come to The Rookery again.

  This morning, Pots was in excellent form, he enjoyed the autumn, not minding country mud at all, or deluging rain, and was proud to be in a position to assist the problem of entertaining a guest for the weekend, by the presentation of a rat he had caught in the scullery last week. He brought it in, both of them grinning, and one of them with a tail wagging ferociously, and deposited it at the foot of Mr Bowling’s bed, where, appalled beyond measure, little Miss Souter trod on it and let out a catcall which could have been heard in Tonbridge. Fairy came dashing up the oak staircase, bumping her head on the low rafter there, and getting ready to cry: ‘I told him to wipe his boots, Niggs, men really are the limit—and after all that Ronuk!’ But it was much worse than that.

  ‘Rats,’ cried Niggs hysterically, and very rashly, for Pots gave one wild leap and seized her uproariously by her fat ankles.

  Delius came in ready to say:

  ‘I don’t see any car coming up the road yet, my dear? You did say he was driving down, didn’t you?’

  Fairy Nandle said, never mind what she did say, just listen to what she had to say now, take that dog outside to start with, and lock him up in the shed until Monday and then come back and pick a rat up from the guest room.

  ‘I sometimes wish we had never bought a dog,’ she said angrily, and looking like a witch, ‘and I wouldn’t have, had I known you couldn’t control it, Delius! You really are the most helpless man! And just look at your boots, have you wiped them?’

  Delius got petulant when cornered, and was apt to be snappy. His crab-coloured face took on a resentful demeanour, and he complained that he was treated without proper respect, and like a child in his own house. ‘Am I master in my own house, or am I not?’ he snapped, knowing full well the answer, and always getting it.

  ‘No, you’re not! I don’t know why I agreed to marrying you, I didn’t in the least want to! I’m perfectly happy here with Niggs … Take the dog out. And then come back for the rat. And then go and scrape your boots.’

  Sulking, Delius seized Pots by the collar and dragged him out to where the car was kept under sheets, ‘until after the war, you know, it’s our war effort, self-denial, Niggs thought of it,’ and then he returned with a shovel.

  After that, Niggs and Fairy set to again with brooms and Ronuk, telling him he couldn’t come back until eleven, ‘for your Ovaltine. And must you keep pacing up and down? Mr Bowling can’t possibly get here until twelve.’

  Delius went and sat in the shed with Pots, thinking about things, and wishing, as always, nobody was coming for the weekend. It was always like this. The two women would make him feel small, and he would make stupendous efforts to look big. Then he would be allowed about two sherries, which would make him talk too much. And there would be Hell to pay afterwards. He had only gone to Bowling’s flat because of meeting a man in the city he knew called Minson, who happened to know somebody else, who happened to know somebody else, who was going to the party. Delius saw it was a chance for a blind-up, and as Fairy was away just then he thought he’d risk it. Now he realised he must drop a hint to Bowling not to say how tight he got that night, or how tight everyone else got, either. He sat listening to the rain teeming down, and pricked his large red ears for the sound of a car. It came at about noon, and sure enough there was Bowling, driving an Austin 12. He saw Delius coming out of the shed, and he waved. He had enjoyed the drive down, rain and all, and had stopped several times for a wet, and felt pretty good. The moment he saw Delius and their flat little mushroom house, he wanted to turn round and drive for his life. But it was too late now.

  Through the window, Fairy and Niggs saw the car in the rain. They at once rang the bell for the daily to stand by, rather like a stage manager signalling the warning for house lights, curtain going up, and gave quick little glances around to see that everything was genteel. They were both anxious to create a good impression, Mr Bowling lived such a hectic life, and was obviously monied. Lady Wilton had been telephoned for, to lend tone at teatime, notwithstanding she hadn’t a single original thought in her stupid head, and notwithstanding one of her brothers was in a mental home for inebriates.

  ‘I do hope she can come,’ Mrs Nandle feared, and went to telephone anybody else ‘suitable’ she could think of. ‘The Wilsons? Oh, no, with that stutter of hers, and all that disgusting chatter about babies’ diseases.’

  ‘What about Mrs Elton?’ Miss Souter rather wondered. ‘She was very interested in Ladysmith and seems well read.’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Or the Mathews, dear? Her brother is at the Treasury.’

  The two ladies thought Mr Bowling’s entrance perfectly charming. They had rather forgotten him after all these years, it would have been dreadful if it turned out he wasn’t a gentleman, Delius was so feeble with men, no wonder he hadn’t a single friend. There followed introductions, mentioning Ladysmith, though rather a long time ago now, of course, and mentioning rain, and leading up to rats, but sideskirting to sherry and cocktails, whereby Mr Nandle was in order to stand by the log fire and puff out his chest and say portentously:

  ‘Well, h’ar—and how has the world been treating you?’

  It wasn’t that Mr Bowling thought unkindly against the Nandles, or against Miss Souter; how, indeed, could he think unkindly against people who, according to their inherited ideas, and according to their lights, were doing their best to entertain him? It was just that he was good-humouredly fond of analysis, not only of himself, which was introspective and apt to be monotonous, and he liked to sit back and consider everyone. It might be that he despised the other person, but he was not unconscious of the fact that they were fully entitled, and welcome, to judge and despise him.

  And when it came to him that he was going to murder poor old Delius Nandle, he did not think, well, now, this is a shoddy return for a delightful weekend! He thought, instead, upon matters to do with Destiny, wondering, for instance, whether up in God’s Kingdom, there had long ago been placed a little flag, marking in very neat print: ‘This is the time and the hour for a poor old chap called Delius Nandle: he will be killed, for no particular worldly reason—but for my reason.’ He said and thought very sadly: ‘I didn’t want to come here. I didn’t ask him to my party. I didn’t want to be reminded of my past. And I am not really having a nice weekend at all, it’s Hellish, with the rain teeming down the entire time, drenching that depressing stone stork out there in the front garden. I could easily think up some excuse and drive back to town—but I’m not going to. I know it perfectly well.’ He also t
hought instantly: ‘This time next week, without any doubt whatever, I shall be in prison.’

  Under which circumstances wasn’t it common sense to enjoy a bit of country?

  He stared through the window at the stork, feeling sorry it had been on the dole for so long—there were no indications that the Nandles had had any children.

  While he sat day-dreaming, Mrs Nandle said various things which captured his attention and made him feel inwardly angry. She said things which she ought not to have said, the more so if they were true. Perhaps they were and perhaps they weren’t. That was not the point.

  Niggs was out in a yellow mackintosh, with Delius, feeding the chickens. There had been real eggs for tea, and Pots had been allowed in, and all the stories about him had been told, including the one about the rat up in the guest room.

  And now Fairy Nandle, bent at some knitting, ‘a jumper for Delius, next Christmas, Mr Bowling,’ assumed a confidential tone, and by long and devious routes got the conversation round to delicate matters. She was adroit, and was quickly able to say to a comparative stranger:

  ‘Poor Delius, I’m afraid you find him very dull and weak! He gets simply hopeless when he has had a glass of sherry. But you must be tolerant, and I feel you are. I do believe we all ought to be tolerant, and I’m sure you do. I could have divorced him, you know,’ she got out suddenly. ‘Several times.’