“His big hobby. One of the girls went to his house once when he’d got bronchitis or something and she said he’d got all these revolvers like in cases sort of thing hanging round the walls. Not very nice really, is it? You’d think that with all those young children—”
She stopped suddenly and a silence fell between them.
At 5:20 P.M. Rawlins locked the door of his office and left the Department. Florence (at thirty-two, exactly half his age) would have the fish all ready. TGFF. Thank God For Florence!
That night, for no immediately apparent reason, Frank Rawlins dreamed of Carol Summerson.
It was just before 11 A.M. the following Monday that Smithson arrived. Carol was not introduced to him, but from her adjacent room she could hear his voice; could hear, too, the occasional gurgle of Glenfiddich and the clink of the office glasses. Just over an hour later, after the pair of them had walked past her window, she entered Rawlins’s office, took the two glasses, washed them out in the ladies’ loo, and bent down to put them back in the cupboard beside the bottle — now empty.
“Hello!”
She hadn’t heard him come back in, and she felt slightly confused as he steered her by the elbow into her own office.
“Don’t you think it’s about time I treated my confidential secretary to lunch?”
He looked — and sounded — surprisingly sober; and she felt flattered. Soon he was holding her coat ready, and she was slipping her arms into the sleeves.
Easily.
He was interesting — no doubt about that. He told her of the time he and Smithson had worked together in a VD clinic in Vienna; and as he reminisced of this and other experiences Carol felt herself enriched, and newly important.
“Another?”
“I’ve had enough, thank you.”
“Nonsense!” He picked up her glass and made his slightly unsteady way to the bar once more.
Her third gin-and-tonic tasted strong. Nice, though! Was it a double? His own drink looked very much like the orange juice he’d promised himself; and after he’d left her to visit the gents’ she took a sip of it: it tasted even more strongly of gin than hers.
“We’d better be getting back, sir.”
“Yes.”
“Thanks for a lovely lunch.”
“Carol! I’ve had a lot to chink — you know that. But I just want you to know how ver’ much I’d like to go to bed with you this afternoon.”
Carol’s heart sank.
“Don’t be silly! Come on, let’s get back!”
He was hurt, she knew that; a bit ashamed, too. And as they walked back he tried so very hard to sound his usual sober self.
That night Carol Summerson dreamed of Frank Rawlins.
Erotically.
Carol’s raise came through in mid-January, and she was thrilled.
“I’m ever so grateful, sir.”
“You deserve it.”
“Will you come out one day and have lunch with me?”
“When?”
“Whenever you’re free.”
“Today?”
“Today!”
She saw to it that he drank almost all the wine, and she insisted on buying him a glass of brandy after their meal. They were sitting close together now, and gently she moved her right leg against the rough tweed of his trousers. And, just as gently, he responded, saying nothing, yet saying everything.
“Another brandy?” she ventured.
Rawlins looked down at his empty glass, and smiled a little sadly.
“Have you ever thought how wonderful it would be to have a quiet, civilized little place all to yourself where—”
He stopped, and there was a long silence between them before Carol spoke softly in his ear.
“But I’ve got a nice little place out at Wheatley. You see, John’s away for a few days...”
Seven weeks later, Carol’s GP told her that she was quite definitely pregnant.
On the Friday evening of that same week, John Summerson called as usual to collect his wife. It was quarter to five — exactly so — when he walked through into Rawlins’s office and sat down in the chair that his wife had just vacated.
Over his glasses, Rawlins’s eyes registered puzzlement: it was as though a new boy had just strolled into the Masters’ Common Room.
“Can I help you? John — isn’t it?”
“You had sex with my wife.” Summerson spoke quietly, firmly — defying all denial.
“Where on earth did you get such—?”
“You’re lying!”
“Look here! You can’t be serious—”
“She’s pregnant!”
“But you can’t—”
“I watched you!” hissed Summerson.
“But you—”
“Shut up! I’m not the father. I can never be a father. You do understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
“Yes,” answered Rawlins softly.
“Did you enjoy it?” The young man’s eyes were blazing with a terrible anguish.
“I just—”
“Shut up!”
Rawlins sank back in his chair, his shoulders sagging.
“I’m redundant now,” continued Summerson. “They gave me £3,000 for the five years I worked there. There’s not much you can do with £3,000, is there, Professor?”
Rawlins closed his eyes and thought of his sons and thought of Florence and thought of himself, too: he knew exactly what £3,000 might possibly have bought.
When he opened his eyes he saw the revolver in Summerson’s right hand — a British Enfield .380, Number 2, Mark 1, the wooden stock a dirty nicotine-brown, the gunmetal of the fluted barrel as clean and gleaming as a polished stone. Summerson swivelled the revolver round until it pointed straight at Rawlins’s heart, and his finger squeezed the trigger until the hammer lifted to the limit of the catch.
“Pretty accurate, they tell me, at such close range as this, Professor!”
Rawlins said nothing, his eyes seemingly mesmerized as he stared at the cylinder-chamber. But now the revolver was no longer pointing at him; for with slow deliberation Summerson turned it round upon himself and brought the tip of the shining barrel up against his own right temple, where the index finger of his right hand finally exacted that minimal extra pressure on the double-action trigger, and the hammer drove against the cylinder-chamber.
The children had eaten half an hour previously, and Florence Rawlins looked down sadly at the juiceless fillet that lay beneath the low-burning grill. Why couldn’t Frank be more thoughtful?
Six o’clock.
Ten past.
Twenty past.
At half-past six she rang his private office number, but there was no reply.
“Fine! Fine!” The young gynaecologist had repeated. “No problems. Now you’ll promise not to smoke, won’t you?” “I promise.” Of course she wouldn’t smoke! Her thoughts drifted back happily to Rawlins... With a father like Rawlins, it would surely be a boy — and pretty certainly a clever little boy, at that! She’d longed to be a mother ever since she’d been a young girl, when she’d played incessantly, obsessively almost, with her dollies — dressing them, combing their lank locks, bending their stiff joints before propping them up against the backs of chairs...
Six weeks after that first ante-natal clinic, an oblong parcel was delivered to the Rawlinses’ residence, where later in the day the Professor of Forensic Medicine inspected its contents with enthusiasm. The new case would naturally take pride of place, perhaps just inside the front entrance, he thought. He fitted the revolver carefully inside the specially constructed case, closed the glass cover, and held the exhibit up against some imaginary hook on the facing wall. Not a bad reward, really, for being trapped into exercising his dubiously enviable knack of procreating male offspring with even the most perfunctory ejaculation. And even that extraordinary afternoon when young Summerson had pointed the revolver at his heart hadn’t been all that traumatic an experience really, because long before the final, cosmically anticlimactic “click” he had known (as any expert in the field would have known) that there were no bullets in the open chambers of the revolver — not a single one. For all that though, it had been a great relief when the revolver had at last been lowered, and a genuine surprise when Summerson had presented it to him across the desk — reward for services rendered, so to speak. And he really had needed those two large whiskys, although he’d afterwards agreed with a worried, tearful Florence that he should have told her he’d be late.