Fear to Tread (7 page)

Mr. Weatherall wasted no more time. A minute later he was in the High Street, walking fast.

It was nearly eight o’clock. The shops were shut – except for the greengrocers which seemed to observe laws of their own. But there was still plenty of life. The last-house queue was moving into the cinema. The pubs were cheerful splashes of light.

On impulse Mr. Wetherall stopped at the first pub he came to and went in. It was small, snug and almost empty, and there was a coal fire. He bought himself a brandy and drank it. It tasted all right. He ordered another and took this one to the fire and sat down.

He had things to think about. If he went home, his wife would talk to him and that would stop him thinking about them. He could not, by any stretch of imagination, talk to her about it. He had discovered that early on in his married life. Although he was very genuinely in love with her, he could not talk to her about things that mattered. Perhaps all married people were like that.

The figures of Prince and the Guardsman belonged to another place. A separate place. A place which must be kept separate. It was a world in which Pop and Bill Fisher and Sergeant Donovan moved easily. It was their jungle. It had no connection at all with Brinkman Road and the water rate and the butcher’s bill. It must have no connection.

How on earth had he himself got involved in it. It had started with a food parcel. How absurd to take so much trouble over a food parcel, which might contain anything from dried apricots to blackcurrant syrup.

Prince, who had come in softly and seated himself at the table, opposite to Mr. Wetherall, nodded his agreement. “Look for yourself,” he said.

There was the food parcel, open on the table. Mr. Wetherall looked into it. He found himself able to do this without changing his position, merely by elongating his neck. It was an odd sensation. The contents of the parcel were disappointing. Bottles and bottles of blackcurrant syrup.

A hand fell on his shoulder, and he found himself being shaken roughly.

“—go an’ fall into the fire,” said a voice.

“Grmph!” said Mr. Wetherall.

“Never have let him have that second brandy if I’d known,” said the barmaid. “Respectable-looking party, too.”

“What do you mean?” said Mr. Wetherall. “Just fell asleep.”

“You can’t fall asleep in here.”

“Allow me to explain.”

“Fresh air’s what you want.”

Mr. Wetherall found himself in the High Street. He was no longer depressed. His little nap must have done him good. He felt fit and wide awake.

He decided he would call on the Crowdys.

By the time he reached the area of the Bricklayers Arms, a little of the warmth of the fire and the brandy was out of him. Nevertheless he persevered. He climbed the steps. The front door was shut this time, but there was a light showing through the fanlight. He knocked. Almost at once, footsteps approached and the door swung open and Mr. Crowdy, in shirt sleeves and slippers, stood blinking out into the night.

“Oh, it’s Wetherall.”

No sooner had he spoken than Mr. Wetherall realised two things. The first was that Mr. Crowdy was very drunk. The second was that Bill Fisher had been perfectly correct. Mr. Crowdy was a man whom drink mellowed.

“Come in, Wetherall. I was hoping you’d call back. Come right in.”

“I can’t stay—”

“I was a bit short last time. Come right in here and siddown. A bit put out. I’d like to say I was sorry.”

“Oh, that’s quite all right,” said Mr. Wetherall. “Well, only just a drop.” He was not a very experienced drinker but be realised that rum and brandy were unlikely to go well together.

“I was upset. Trouble at work. Plenty of trouble about these days. Don’t have to go out and look for it.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“Let me tell you something. Take one step off the middle of the road and you’re up to your neck in the muck.”

Not being quite sure what this new departure was about Mr. Wetherall contented himself with a sympathetic grunt.

“The truest saying ever spoken. What a tangled web we weave.”

“When first we practise to deceive,” concluded Mr. Wetherall, with a feeling that he was taking part in some round game.

“That’s right. Practise to deceive. That’s it.”

Mr. Crowdy’s great red face was glowing under the conflicting pressures of drink, self-pity and an overmastering desire to confide in somebody. Indeed, there is no telling what he might not have said if Mr. Wetherall had not unfortunately changed the subject by asking:

“Where’s Peter?”

“In bed,” said Mr. Crowdy. “Where-else-woody-be-this- timer-night?”

“I really meant, why isn’t he coming to school?”

“Got chicken-pox.”

“But hasn’t he been going to work with you at the station?”

“That’s right.”

“But how can he go to work if he’s got chicken-pox?”

“It’s not the infectious sort.”

“Well,” said Mr. Wetherall, doubtfully. “If it isn’t the infectious sort why doesn’t he come to school?”

“Can’t come to school with chicken-pox. ‘Gainst the law.”

It occurred to Mr. Wetherall that he was not making much progress. He also recognised, with the inner clarity of a man who doesn’t drink very much that although he was sober, at the moment one more glass of rum was going to finish him.

He got up, shook hands with Mr. Crowdy and, without being conscious of any precise interval of time, found himself in the street looking up at a policeman.

“Nice night, officer,” he said affably.

“Lovely, sir,” said the policeman. “Were you going anywhere?”

“Going to catch a bus. Have you ever considered, officer, what a prolific word ‘catch’ is?? Catch a bus – catch a mouse – catch a crab”

“Perhaps I’d better come with you,” said the policeman.

“Delighted,” said Mr. Wetherall. What a pleasant man! As they walked Mr. Wetherall told him a number of interesting and little known facts about Wellington’s campaigns in the Peninsula. On the bus he went to sleep. The conductor, who knew him by sight, woke him at the right stop.

When he reached the house he found his wife waiting on the stairs. As soon as she saw him she burst into tears.

“Now then, Alice,” said Mr. Wetherall sternly. “What’s all this about?”

“I was so worried.”

“I’m often late on Wednesday. And you know I was getting my meal out—”

“It was the man—”

“What man?”

“A man telephoned, about an hour ago. He said he hoped you were all right.”

“What sort of man?”

“He hadn’t got a very nice voice,” said Mrs. Wetherall. “I asked him who he was and why should he think you weren’t all right. He just laughed.”

“Laughed, did he?” said Mr. Wetherall thoughtfully.

“Yes. Then he rang off.”

Mr. Wetherall went to school on Friday morning with one fixed intention. That was to forget about the events of the last three days.

The weather was helpful to such resolution. After the fogs and uncertainties of the previous days, it was an autumn morning which could have sat as a model for all autumn mornings. The sun shone down through a layer of mist which filtered the sunbeams into defined and spikey rays. The sky seemed pale and drained of colour. It looked like the background of an Italian religious painting.

On his desk Mr. Wetherall found a note that Colonel Bond had telephoned and would telephone again. Peggy had added “Received 9.12” and Mr. Wetherall looked uneasily at the message.

Colonel Bond was a man who had brought to a high pitch the art of putting other people into their places. It was a technique which Mr. Wetherall had often observed in action. It was founded on the tactical principle of never, in any circumstances, giving an opinion of his own. If a question was put to him so directly that it demanded an answer he would say “Well, really!” or “I wouldn’t know” in tones of such haughty surprise that the questioner often apologised for having been so gauche as to put the question at all. Though he still nourished his military title he had not seen khaki since 1919. As well as being a retired colonel he was a retired accountant, a retired J.P. and, at the moment, Chairman of the General Purposes Sub-Committee which, under the direction of the Schools Committee, looked after the affairs of South Borough Secondary School.

By and large he was about the heaviest cross that Mr. Wetherall had to bear.

It suddenly occurred to him that the excitements of the past few days had postponed a number of little jobs that he had intended to put in hand before his next meeting with the colonel. There was the revised programme for evening “Supplementaries” – always a ticklish matter; there was the minute on staff discipline (the colonel had encountered one of the junior masters smoking in the corridor); there was the census of boys with unremoved tonsils—

“A lady to see you,” said Peggy.

“Oh.”

“No need to straighten your tie. This girlfriend won’t see seventy again. I put her in the small class-room. She wouldn’t come upstairs. She says it’s important.”

“All right,” said Mr. Wetherall.

In the class-room – it was the same one in which he had talked to Luigi – he found old Mrs. Crowdy.

“He’s dead,” she said.

Mr. Wetherall looked at her stupidly.

“Fell over a bridge at the main line intersection and broke himself up.”

Mr. Wetherall battled with the fear that had got hold of him.

“Peter—?”

“No. No. Not the boy. His father.”

“When did it happen?”

“This morning. He goes off to work at six with the boy. The boy’s back home now. I come straight along—”

She had come straight along, on her feet. An adventurous journey for an old lady. When in trouble, go to the schoolmaster or the parson.

“Rent’s paid to the end of the week,” she said, “then we’ll have to move.”

Mr. Wetherall looked at her helplessly.

“What are you going to do?”

“I shall be all right.” She spoke with the authority of one who has survived for three quarters of a century at the level of bare subsistence. “It’s the boy—”

“I can give him a bed. For a night or two, anyway. After that I can probably fix something.” It was the sort of arrangement he had had to make more than once before, in the recurrent crises which occurred in the lives of his pupils. “What about family?”

“I’m all the family he’s got,” said the old lady. “I never heard he had no other. His mother was from Wales. Might be some family there. They’ll take some getting hold of.”

“That’s all right. I have to ask. I’ve seen trouble caused that way before.” He got a bit of paper and wrote on it: “I, Mrs. – first name’ll do – Amelia Crowdy, being the paternal grandmother and, to the best of my knowledge, the only surviving relative of Peter Crowdy, agree to placing him in the custody of the headmaster of South Borough Secondary School until such time as permanent arrangements can be made for him.”

He read this out to Mrs. Crowdy who repeated “paternal grandmother” proudly to herself, nodded her head and signed her name with surprising clarity.

“You know my address,” said Mr. Wetherall. “There, I’ll write it down for you. Tell Peter to get his things together and go straight along. He can take a bus. I’ll telephone my wife.”

When she had gone he went back to his study. He placed the paper in the Crowdy folder, noticing as he did so the last letter which Mr. Crowdy had sent him and the envelope with the scribbled note on the back “Jock’s Pull-In for Carmen.” In the press of events it had slipped his memory. Now he pulled the envelope out and sat looking at it.

“Sergeant Donovan,” announced Peggy formally. She spoilt the effect by adding, “Wipe your feet, Patsy, there’s a boy. I just swept the carpet this morning.”

“Come in, Sergeant. Put the engaged notice up, would you, Peggy.”

“I shan’t keep you long, I hope.”

“About Crowdy?”

Sergeant Donovan turned sharply. Some feeling showed in his eyes.

“Who told you that, Mr. Wetherall?”

“I had old Mrs. Crowdy round here just now. Poor old soul. She says she can look after herself. I’ve taken the boy off her hands till we can fix something.”

“I see.” Sergeant Donovan sounded disconcerted. He had come to say something, to take a certain line with Mr. Wetherall, and he was out of his stride.

“Was it an accident?”

“I suppose you could walk over a three foot parapet if you had enough on your mind.”

“What sort of thing do you mean?”

“That’s something I hoped
you
might be able to tell
me,”
said Sergeant Donovan, “seeing you’ve been twice to his house lately.”

“Three times,” said Mr. Wetherall. “I was there last night, too.”

“Ah. Were you now.” Something which, by a stretch of the imagination, might have been the beginning of a grin broke the grim face. “You wouldn’t by any chance have been the talkative gentleman that Timmins saw back to his bus about half-past ten.”

“I was not aware—”

“Highly instructive, I’m given to understand. It’s all in his book. You didn’t know that policemen were authors, did you? Everything that happens to them, big or little, it all goes into the book. Makes funny reading sometimes.”

“No doubt,” said Mr. Wetherall stiffly.

“Well now, what did you and Mr. Crowdy find to talk about?”

“Let me ask you a question for a change. Why are you interested in Crowdy?”

“We’re always interested in people who get themselves killed.” The smile gapped again.

“Yes,” said Mr. Wetherall. “But he hadn’t been killed last night. Were you watching him? How did you know I’d been to see him?”

“Peggy told me.”

Mr. Wetherall considered. He didn’t believe it. But it was just conceivable that it was true.

“All right,” he said. “For what it’s worth, I’ll tell you about it. I first went to see Crowdy on the night of the boxing – that was Wednesday night. I went to tell him that I’d fixed up a job for Peter – that’s the boy. He threw me out. For absolutely no reason at all, that I could see. He wouldn’t have schoolmasters snooping and prying round his house. That sort of thing. I thought at the time he was drunk. I don’t think so now. I believe he was frightened.”