The Parasite Person (14 page)

M
R
M
AYNARD
(M
ATHS
) was looking really happy for the first time in living memory. His crossword puzzle had been laid aside unfinished, his slightly frog-like face, usually furrowed with worry and boredom, was puckered now with a quite different set of lines, criss-cross wrinkles of pleasure and excitement: and—a quite unheard-of phenomenon this, reducing the rest of the staff-room to awed silence—he was talking, nineteen to the dozen.

The subject of his discourse was billiard-balls. Not your
common
-or-garden billiard-balls, fit only for playing billiards with, but
one
million
billiard-balls, of which just two were black, and all the rest white. Supposing, Helen had asked him, really wanting to know the answer (and this in itself is a rare enough occurrence in any teacher’s day) supposing you had all these billiard-balls mixed up at random in a gigantic sack, and supposing you put your hand in and pulled out nine of them—what were the chances of the two black ones being among them?

Helen had given much thought to the mode of presenting her problem and had decided to dehumanise it in this way in order to deceive the assembled gossips into thinking that she was talking about something genuinely boring, and thus throw them off the scent.

It proved to have been a very good idea. Mr Maynard was loving it.

“Just to make the arithmetic simpler,” he suggested, a little apologetically, “shall we say that it’s
ten
that you manage to gather into your hand rather than nine? The
principle
will be the same; but
of course if the actual figure nine is important to your purposes, then I could easily …”

Helen shook her head, hastily. Making the arithmetic simpler seemed to her an entirely good idea.

“Right. Now, let’s see …” Mr Maynard gave a little wriggle of satisfaction as the calculation took shape in his mind. “Ten billiard-balls out of a million, yes? So first let us divide this million into sets of ten, shall we? Of which this first set, the one you pick out, is just one, yes? All together, there will be 100,000 such sets in the sack—are you with me?”

Helen nodded. He was making it far clearer than Martin had done.

“And so it follows,” continued her eager instructor, “that the chances of any particular one of these black balls being in any particular one of these sets of ten will be 100,000 to one against. Right? That’s just for
one
of the black balls. Now, here you must listen carefully, because many people—even quite intelligent people—are inclined to imagine in a case like this that the chances against
two
balls being in the given set are merely double the chances against one—a mere 200,000, in fact, in our present case.

“But, dear me, how they deceive themselves, these people! The figure doesn’t merely have to be
doubled
in this kind of case: it has to be
squared
!”
He looked at Helen wide-eyed, waiting for her to be impressed: which indeed she was, though a little bemused. Kindly, he translated for her.

“100,000
squared
,”
he said, “comes to ten thousand million. So those are your odds, my dear. Ten thousand million against.”

He laughed his dry, little-used laugh.

“And so if someone is trying to persuade you to gamble on these sort of odds, my dear, then you must say No to him, immediately! You must indeed!”

Helen thanked him effusively for the trouble he had taken over his explanation, promised faithfully to heed his very prudent advice, and made her way back across the staff-room to her usual seat, Mr Maynard’s gaze following her yearningly as she went. It wasn’t often that anyone asked him anything of the smallest interest or importance, and it had quite made his day.

“So what was all
that
in aid of?” Wendy whispered loudly, leaning across an intervening figure trying to add up the morning’s milk-money. “Are you seeking the way to his heart through rows of noughts? You could be right, at that!”

She giggled, still tilted at this awkward angle waiting for Helen to giggle too, and say something amusing; but Helen just smiled vaguely, and shook her head, thus bringing the conversation to an end. She very much wanted it to be at an end because she well knew that a bit of skilful probing by Wendy would soon break down her defences. Also, it seemed a bit hard on the milk-calculator to be leaned across like this; rather rude, really, since the poor woman neither wished nor was being invited to take part in the somewhat idiotic conversation.

Helen was finding it hard to concentrate this morning on anything. It was Thursday, her half-day, and the free afternoon loomed ahead like a black cloud because of the awful thing she was going to have to do.

The possibility of coincidence could be ruled out. She hadn’t really needed Mr Maynard to spell out to her that there was a fallacy in Martin’s reasoning, but all the same it had been a help, somehow, to consult him. With his kind, weary blue eyes fixed on her earnestly, his dry voice setting out the calculations so precisely, she had been able to feel that she was not coming to her dreadful decision totally and entirely on her own.

It was the only possible decision, she had known this ever since last night.
Someone
had to call back at those two fatal addresses, and since Martin refused to, then she, Helen, must do it.

The treachery of it seemed awful: but the treachery of
not
doing it was even worse. How could she stand by and allow Martin to walk, in blind, pig-headed innocence, into some bizarre and
incomprehensible
trap?

*

In the suburb where Mrs Claire Huntingdon had met her death, daffodils were already thrusting up out of the dark earth, and crocuses were massing in purple and gold alongside the trim lawns. February was over at last, and spring was everywhere. Helen felt the warmth of the sun, for the first time in many months, through
her thick winter coat, and the suddenness of the change was overwhelming.

Every year it was the same. Every year through the long dark days you know perfectly well that spring
will
come, and summer too. There they are, on the calendar, plain as a clock-face. You even fill in dates in your diary, on the absolute assumption that these dates will come; that April will be followed by May, that there will
be
such a month as June, and that on the 19th of July the summer term will end. You don’t question the arrival of these dates, not for one single moment. Nobody does.

But all the time, something deep inside you doesn’t believe a word of it. Something in you is totally adjusted to winter, and only to winter; believes only in winter, and is shocked rigid, year after year, when the first spring day is suddenly upon you.

And this year, for Helen, it had to be today of all days when this happened. She had enough on her mind already, without this disorientation caused by the tilting of the earth in its orbit. She walked along Tewkesbury Avenue in a sort of daze, her body ecstatic with the reviving sun, her mind dark with fears.

*

Number Eleven was pretty much like all the other houses in the road; the front garden was as neat, the bulbs as far advanced. The only difference was that at two of the upstairs windows the blinds were drawn.

And it was only now that Helen realised, quite suddenly, how impossible was this venture on which she had embarked.

Because you couldn’t
do
this sort of thing. You just couldn’t. How could you, a complete stranger, walk calmly into a house of mourning, and start asking intrusive questions about how the lost loved one had spent her last days—perhaps even hours—on earth? Had she had a visitor just before she died—someone she’d never met before, armed with a notebook, asking all sorts of personal questions? How had the deceased answered? Was there any kind of an angry scene? And if you have no evidence that any of this happened, have you, on the other hand, any evidence that it didn’t …?

It was unthinkable. Helen looked at the quiet house, pictured
the grief-stricken family inside—quite a young family, probably, since Claire Huntingdon had only been forty-four. She pictured a shattered young teenager opening the door to her, the eldest girl, eyes red with weeping for her mother … and she turned and almost ran down the road, back the way she had come, ashamed, now, of ever having contemplated such an intrusion. No wonder she had dreaded the expedition so, had had her whole morning darkened by it. Her heart had been warning her all along that this was a thing she simply could not do.

Still the sun shone. The spring afternoon was yet young. Surely there was
something
she could do, other than slink home defeated and let matters take their course, dragging Martin with them, to the ruination, perhaps, of his whole career?

At the bus stop, she stood still, and forced herself to think.

If only she knew where Ruth lived! Then the thing to do would be to go straight there, now, and tackle the girl head-on, by-passing altogether Martin’s all-too-predictable views on such a course of action. Alone together, just the two of them, free of Martin’s defensive interruptions on Ruth’s behalf, Helen had little doubt that she would be able to win the girl’s confidence, at least sufficiently to get
some
sort of idea of what it was she was up to. Her years of experience with schoolgirls had taught her that if you can once get a girl by herself, and talk to her quietly, on a one-to-one basis, it is almost always possible to come to terms with even the most determined of trouble-makers. That the method would work with Ruth Ledbetter she had little doubt—after all, the girl was only nineteen, not much more than a schoolgirl—but what use was this if she didn’t know where to find her? Whether Martin had deliberately concealed Ruth’s address, or whether (and this would be typical of him) he’d never bothered to find it out in the first place, the result was the same: checkmate.

Who else might know it? There were no mutual friends, so far as Helen knew. Unless, of course, you counted Walter: but he, according to Martin, was so monumentally useless at absolutely everything that he hardly seemed worth bothering about: and in any case, she didn’t know where he lived, either.

It all looked pretty hopeless.

But wait! It suddenly occurred to her that there
was
a mutual friend—a mutual enemy, rather, but none the worse for that, when it came to collecting scurrilous information about someone.

Beatrice. Only a few mornings ago, Beatrice had rung up in a state of great indignation about Ruth, complaining, in no
uncertain
terms, of the girl’s insolence and bad manners.

Why not go and talk to Beatrice? Right now, while she had the whole free afternoon ahead of her? It could well be that in the course of her altercation with Ruth, Beatrice might have picked up any number of miscellaneous facts about her unwelcome visitor which she would be only too happy to divulge to a sympathetic listener.

The fact that Beatrice was the injured wife and she, Helen, the scarlet woman, seemed at the moment to be of little consequence. Curiosity is one of the strongest of all human emotions—though strangely neglected by politicians and economists, who fondly imagine that greed is the only vice worth exploiting—and Helen had little doubt of her welcome at Number 16 Hadley Gardens if she came around with so fascinating a mystery as this to discuss.

*

She had rung the bell twice before she made herself face the fact that Beatrice must be out. Since Martin had left her, Beatrice had had chimes installed, and as she listened to them tinkling coyly for the second time, Helen could not help reflecting, with a certain satisfaction, on how much Martin would have hated this sort of thing. Free of his rigidly uplifting presence, Beatrice was fast turning into the person she really was, chimes and all. No doubt there would be plaster gnomes on the front lawn before the season was much further advanced, Helen smugly surmised. Not that she had anything against plaster gnomes herself; they could look quite jolly, sometimes; but she had lived with Martin long enough by now to see them through his eyes, and to know that they were a Bad Thing, and that only the most despicable people went in for them. Signs of despicableness in Beatrice still stirred in her a certain gratification, though this was a habit she should be getting out of by now. Particularly if she was going to treat Beatrice as a
confidante every time her life with Martin ran into a rough patch such as this….

Perhaps Beatrice was out at the back, gardening? This first day of real spring always brought people out into their gardens, madly doing
something,
even if only damage, to the nascent growth.

She set off round to the back, passing the dustbins—new ones, one scarlet and one sky-blue. Again, not Martin’s taste, but they did brighten up the dank, sunless passageway, no doubt about it.

There was no sign of Beatrice in the garden; nor, indeed, any signs of gardening in progress. No tools, no wheelbarrows intruded their note of human restlessness into the quiet cycle of growth that was going on from fence to fence in all directions.

Was it worth waiting for Beatrice to come home? But she might be out for all the rest of the day—or even be away altogether, on holiday or something? Impelled by a vague curiosity, Helen rounded the far corner of the house and stood on tiptoe to look in through the kitchen window.

At first, she could see almost nothing, so accustomed were her eyes to the sharp radiance outdoors; but gradually her vision cleared, and she could see that the kitchen was indeed currently in use; it didn’t look at all like the kitchen of someone who has packed up and gone on holiday. A half-empty bottle of milk, still looking quite fresh, stood on top of the refrigerator; and on the draining-board, in a saucepan of cold water, some freshly-peeled potatoes were awaiting the time when it might be convenient for someone to cook them. You shouldn’t do this, of course, it’s bad for potatoes to be left to soak like this, it takes away all the flavour: but that was typical Beatrice for you. The kitchen table had on it a pale blue plastic cloth adorned with smudgy pictures of knives and forks and lobsters and things. At the moment, it was covered with crumbs, and at one end lay the remains of a salad lunch, beetroot and bits of lettuce, together with an open packet of sliced bread and a dish of butter without a lid. In the midst of all this sat the Lockwoods’ tabby cat, licking itself contentedly, as it had no doubt been licking its fill of the butter. The way Beatrice would never discipline that cat had been one of Martin’s early grievances, Helen remembered; and in those days, in the heyday of her self-imposed mission to
succeed triumphantly in every area where Beatrice failed, this could have presented quite a problem, for she was no more capable of disciplining a cat that has made up its mind what it wants to do, than anyone else is. Mercifully, however, this grievance of
Martin’
s had been followed up almost immediately by one concerning Beatrice’s insistence on keeping a cat at all; and here Helen had been able effortlessly to excel. Nothing is easier than not keeping a cat, especially if you live on the third floor, whereas disciplining one is very nearly beyond the wit of humankind.