The Complete Stories (29 page)

  My worries at this period became symbolized in a single problem; what to do with my hats. I owned what now seemed a multitude of them, of one sort and another; two of them of silk—the tall hat I took to weddings and a second I had bought some years earlier when I thought for a time that I was going to take to fox-hunting; there were a bowler, a panama, a black, a brown and a grey soft hat, a green hat from Salzburg, a sombrero, some tweed caps for use on board ship and in trains—all these had accumulated from time to time and all, with the possible exception of the sombrero, were more or less indispensable. Was I doomed for the rest of my life to travel everywhere with this preposterous collection? At the moment they were, most of them, in St. John's Wood, but, any day now, the negotiations for the sale might be finished and the furniture removed, sold or sent to store.

  Somewhere to hang up my hat, that was what I needed.

  I consulted Roger Simmonds who was lunching with me. I felt as though I had known Roger all my life; actually I had first met him in our second year at Oxford; we edited an undergraduate weekly together and had been close associates ever since. He was one of the very few people I corresponded with when I was away; we met constantly when I was in London. Sometimes I even stayed with him, for he and half a dozen others constituted a kind of set. We had all known each other intimately over a number of years, had from time to time passed on girls from one to the other, borrowed and lent freely. When we were together we drank more and talked more boastfully than we normally did. We had grown rather to dislike one another; certainly when any two or three of us were alone, we blackguarded the rest, and if asked about them on neutral ground I denied their friendship. "Blades?" I would say. "Yes, I used to see a lot of him, but we never seem to meet now he's in Parliament" or "Jimmie Rendall? Yes, I knew him well. Then he got taken up by Lord Monomark and that is the end of all friendship." About Roger I used to say, "I don't think he's interested in anything except politics now."

  This was more or less true. In the late twenties he set up as a writer and published some genuinely funny novels on the strength of which he filled a succession of rather dazzling jobs with newspapers and film companies, but lately he had married an unknown heiress, joined the Communist Party and become generally respectable.

  "I never wear a hat now I am married," said Roger virtuously. "Lucy says they're kulak. Besides I was beginning to lose my hair."

  "My dear Roger, you've been bald as a coot for ten years. But it isn't only a question of hats. There are overcoats."

  "Only in front. It's as thick as anything at the back. How many overcoats have you got?"

  "Four, I think."

  "Too many."

  We discussed it at length and decided it was possible to manage with three.

  "Workers pawn their overcoats in June and take them out again in October," Roger said. He wanted to talk about his play, Internal Combustion. "The usual trouble with ideological drama," he said, "is that they're too mechanical. I mean the characters are economic types, not individuals, and as long as they look and speak like individuals it's bad art. D'you see what I mean?"

  "I do, indeed."

  "Human beings without human interest."

  "Very true. I ..."

  "Well, I've cut human beings out altogether."

  "Sounds rather like an old-fashioned ballet."

  "Exactly," Roger said with great pleasure. "It is an old-fashioned ballet. I knew you'd understand. Poor old Benwell couldn't. The Finsbury International Theatre are sitting on it now, and if it's orthodox—and I think it is—they may put it on this summer if Lucy finds the money."

  "Is she keen too?"

  "Well, not very, as a matter of fact. You see, she's having a baby and that seems to keep her interested at the moment."

  "But to return to the question of my hats ..."

  "I tell you what. Why don't you buy a nice quiet house in the country. I shall want somewhere to stay while this baby is born."

  There was the rub. It was precisely this fear that had been working in my mind for days, the fear of making myself a sitting shot to the world. It lay at the root of the problem of privacy; the choice which torments to the verge of mania, between perpetual flight and perpetual siege; and the unresolved universal paradox of losing things in order to find them.

  "Surely that is odd advice from a communist?"

  Roger became suddenly wary; he had been caught and challenged in loose talk. "Ideally, of course, it would be," he said. "But I daresay that in practice, for the first generation, we shall allow a certain amount of private property where its value is purely sentimental. Anyway, any investment you make now is bound to be temporary. That's why I feel no repugnance about living on Lucy's money ..." Marxist ethics kept him talking until we had finished luncheon. Over the coffee he referred to Ingres as a "bourgeois" painter. When he left me I sat for some time in the leather armchair finishing my cigar. The club was emptying as the younger members went back to their work and their elders padded off to the library for the afternoon nap. I belonged to neither world. I had nothing whatever to do. At three in the afternoon my friends would all be busy and, in any case, I did not want to see them. I was ready for a new deal. I climbed to my room, began re-reading the early chapters of Murder at Mountrichard Castle, put it from me and faced the boredom of an afternoon in London. Then the telephone rang and the porter said, "Mr. Thurston is downstairs to see you."

  "Who?"

  "Mr. Thurston. He says he has an appointment."

  "I don't know anything about him. Will you ask what he wants?"

  A pause: "Mr. Thurston says will you see him very particular."

  "Very well, I'll come down."

  A tall young man in a raincoat was standing in the hall. He had reddish hair and an unusually low, concave forehead. He looked as though he had come to sell some hopelessly unsuitable commodity and had already despaired of success.

  "Mr. Thurston?" He took my hand in a savage grip. "You say you have an appointment with me. I am afraid I don't remember it."

  "No, well, you see I thought we ought to have a yarn, and you know how suspicious these porter-fellows are at clubs. I knew you wouldn't mind my stretching a point." He spoke with a kind of fierce jauntiness. "I had to give up my club. Couldn't run to it."

  "Perhaps you will tell me what I can do for you."

  "I used to belong to the Wimpole. I expect you know it?"

  "I'm not sure that I do."

  "No? You would have liked it. I could have taken you there and introduced you to some of the chaps."

  "That, I gather, is now impossible."

  "Yes. It's a pity. There are some good scouts there. I daresay you know the Batchelors?"

  "Yes. Were you a member there, too?"

  "Yes, at least not exactly, but a great pal of mine was—Jimmie Grainger. I expect you've often run across Jimmie?"

  "No, I don't think I have."

  "Funny. Jimmie knows almost everyone. You'd like him. I must bring you together." Having failed to establish contact, Thurston seemed now to think that responsibility for the conversation devolved on me.

  "Mr. Thurston," I said, "is there anything particular you wished to say to me? Because otherwise ..."

  "I was coming to that," said Thurston. "Isn't there somewhere more private where we could go and talk?"

  It was a reasonable suggestion. Two page boys sat on a bench beside us, the hall porter watched us curiously from behind his glass screen, two or three members passing through paused by the tape machine to take a closer look at my peculiar visitor. I was tolerably certain that he was not one of the enthusiasts for my work who occasionally beset me, but was either a beggar or a madman or both; at another time I should have sent him away, but that afternoon, with no prospect of other interest, I hesitated. "Be a good scout," he urged.

  There is at my club a nondescript little room of depressing aspect where members give interviews to the press, go through figures with their accountants, and in general transact business which they think would be conspicuous in the more public rooms. I took Thurston there.

  "Snug little place," he said, surveying this dismal place. "O.K. if I smoke?"

  "Perfectly."

  "Have one?"

  "No thank you."

  He lit a cigarette, drew a deep breath of smoke, gazed at the ceiling and, as though coming to the point, said, "Quite like the old Wimpole."

  My heart sank. "Mr. Thurston," I said, "you have surely not troubled to come here simply in order to talk to me about your club."

  "No. But you see it's rather awkward. Don't exactly know how to begin. I thought I might lead up to it naturally. But I realize that your time's valuable, Mr. Plant, so I may as well admit right out that I owe you an apology."

  "Yes?"

  "Yes. I'm here under false pretences. My name isn't Thurston."

  "No?"

  "No. I'd better tell you who I am, hadn't I?"

  "If you wish to."

  "Well, here goes. I'm Arthur Atwater." The name was spoken with such an air of bravado, with such confidence of it making a stir, that I felt bewildered. It meant absolutely nothing to me. Where and how should I have heard it? Was this a fellow-writer, a distant cousin, a popular athlete? Atwater? Atwater? I repeated it to myself. No association was suggested. My visitor meanwhile seemed unconscious of how flat his revelation had fallen, and was talking away vehemently:

  "Now you see why I couldn't give my name. It's awfully decent of you to take it like this. I might have known you were a good scout. I've been through Hell I can tell you ever since it happened. I haven't slept a wink. It's been terrible. You know how it is when one's nerve's gone. I shouldn't be fit for work now even if they'd kept me on in the job. Not that I care about that. Let them keep their lousy job. I told the manager that to his face. I wasn't brought up and educated to sell stockings. I ought to have gone abroad long ago. There's no opportunity in England now, unless you've got influence or are willing to suck up to a lot of snobs. You get a fair chance out there in the colonies where one man's as good as another and no questions asked."

  I can seldom bear to let a misstatement pass uncorrected. "Believe me, Mr. Atwater," I said. "You have a totally mistaken view of colonial life. You will find people just as discriminating and inquisitive there as they are here."

  "Not where I'm going," he said. "I'm clearing right out. I'm fed up. This case hanging over me and nothing to do all day except think about the accident. It was an accident too. No one can try and hang the blame on me and get away with it. I was on my proper side of the road and I hooted twice. It wasn't a Belisha crossing. It was my road. The old man just wouldn't budge. He saw me coming, looked straight at me, as if he was daring me to drive into him. Well, I thought I'd give him a fright. You know how it is when you're driving all day. You get fed to the teeth with people making one get out of their way all the time. I like to wake them up now and then when there's no copper near, and make them jump for it. It seems like an hour now, but it all happened in two seconds. I kept on, waiting for him to skip, and he kept on, strolling across the road as if he'd bought it. It wasn't till I was right on top of him I realized he didn't intend to move. Then it was too late to stop. I put on my brakes and tried to swerve. Even then I might have missed him if he'd stopped, but he just kept on walking right into me and the mudguard got him. That's how it was. No one can blame it on me."

  It was just as my Uncle Andrew had described it.

  "Mr. Atwater," I said, "do I understand that you are the man who killed my father?"

  "Don't put it that way, Mr. Plant. I feel sore enough about it. He was a great artist. I read about him in the papers. It makes it worse, his having been a great artist. There's too little beauty in the world as it is. I should have liked to be an artist myself, only the family went broke. Father took me away from school young, just when I might have got into the eleven. Since then I've had nothing but odd jobs. I've never had a real chance. I want to start again, somewhere else."

  I interrupted him, frigidly I thought. "And why, precisely, have you come to me?"

  But nothing could disabuse him of the idea that I was well-disposed. "I knew I could rely on you," he said. "And I'll never forget it, not as long as I live. I've thought everything out. I've got a pal who went out to Rhodesia; I think it was Rhodesia. Somewhere in Africa, anyway. He'll give me a shakedown till I get on my feet. He's a great fellow. Won't he be surprised when I walk in on him! All I need is my passage money—third class, I don't care. I'm used to roughing it these days—and something to make a start with. I could do it on fifty pounds."

  "Mr. Atwater," I said, "have I misunderstood you, or are you asking me to break the law by helping you to evade your trial and also give you a large sum of money?"

  "You'll get it back, every penny of it."

  "And our sole connection is the fact that, through pure insolence, you killed my father."

  "Oh, well, if you feel like that about it ..."

  "I am afraid you greatly overrate my good nature."

  "Tell you what. I'll make you a sporting offer. You give me fifty pounds now and I'll pay it back in a year plus another fifty pounds to any charity you care to name. How's that?"

  "I'm afraid there is no point in our discussing the matter. Will you please go?"

  "Certainly I'll go. If that's how you take it, I'm sorry I ever came. It's typical of the world," he said, rising huffily. "Everyone's all over you till you get into a spot of trouble. It's ‘good old Arthur' while you're in funds. Then, when you need a pal it's ‘you overrate my good nature, Mr. Atwater.'"

  I followed him across the room, but before we reached the door his mood had changed. "You don't understand," he said. "They may send me to prison for this. That's what happens in this country to a man earning his living. If I'd been driving my own Rolls-Royce they'd all be touching their caps. ‘Very regrettable accident,' they'd be saying. ‘Hope your nerves have not been shocked, Mr. Atwater'—but to a poor man driving a two seater ... Mr. Plant, your father wouldn't have wanted me sent to prison."