Did his father sense this change, or had he grown maudlin since his wife’s death? He’d begun to fawn on Horridge, to hug him drunkenly, calling him “son” for the first time in his life. But when the new batch of business cards was printed they’d advertised HORRIDGE, not HORRIDGE AND SONS. His son wasn’t a man, he was only a tool to be used without acknowledgment.
Had his son’s aloofness made him drink more heavily? He had begun drinking on the job, and that had caused the fall. Horridge had heard his sudden incoherent shout below him, which might have been a warning or a threat; he’d felt the support of the ladder wrenched from beneath him, the terrifying impact of the ground. Even before the pain grew, he’d known that his leg was irreparably damaged.
When they released him from the hospital, he’d found his father intolerable. The man had kept apologising, clinging hotly to him, breathing stale beer into his face. From disliking physical contact, Horridge had grown to loathe and fear it. Never before had the house seemed so cramped. It was full of his father’s sounds, threatening to close in on him. He had felt physically menaced.
Often he would spend the evening immobile in his chair, listening for the threat of the key in the lock, his father’s drunken blundering into the house. “I’m sorry,” his father would always begin, like the first ritual words of a confession. “I’ll make it up to you.” He’d taken Horridge on jobs, to carry the paint and to do such work as didn’t need a ladder. Most of all Horridge had detested his charity.
Drink had killed him. There had hardly been space in the front room for the crowd around the coffin. All the women who lived in the street had wept around Horridge. “Don’t you get lonely. Come in and see us whenever you want. We’ll look after you.” How many of them had talked about him behind his back? They were as bad as his father, lying there looking peaceful and gentle, the hypocrite. Gazing at his father’s sunken face, Horridge had been unable to remember anything good about him. He’d become merely an object, incapable of menacing.
Once the crowd and the coffin had left, the house had seemed the right size at last. Horridge had strode through it, occupying all the rooms. He had finally become a man, with his own house. He’d felt triumphant and free.
He hadn’t long felt so – not when he’d realised that there was no money to come from his father, who had squandered it on drink. He’d applied for jobs, but even when he concealed his limp they had noticed it. At last he’d had to rely on the government’s grudging charity. His father had dragged him down to that.
No need to depress himself. He’d achieved something today. The derelict houses looked like a low fence, pitifully incapable of containing the desolation that had already reached them. Smoke roved the mud as though in search of the destroyed streets. He turned his back on the waste.
The hedge swayed over the pavement outside his house. He made for the roadway to avoid it. Could he really pass his house without going in one last time? He glanced up at the front bedroom, into which he’d moved his bed when the house was his. Through the broken window peered a burst football.
He’d kick that ball out, if he did nothing else. He picked his way into the front room, over the doorstep scaly with broken slate. Water grew upon a stain on the ceiling, drew itself together, dangled, dripped. The wallpaper had been clawed down – by animals, or by people?
Between the communicating doorways of the front and back rooms the stairs climbed, hemmed in by walls. Fallen plaster crunched underfoot. The sensation reminded him of fever, of the impression that his skin was encrusted and crawling. He could hardly recognise the house; never before had it felt so grubby – as though it had been buried and disinterred.
A mattress drooped over the top of the stairs, bristling with rusty springs. He had never seen it before. Since he had been lured out by the housing planners, someone must have been sleeping here. And there was movement in the back bedroom, the skirt of someone who was trying to hide. It was wallpaper, flapping in a breeze.
He paced carefully into the front bedroom. Water had burst the paper overhead, which trailed sodden streamers. The scraps of paper which clung to the walls looked entirely unfamiliar. Had the absence of doors and house numbers tricked him into the wrong house? Or had that pattern lurked beneath the wallpaper all the time he had slept in this room?
Some of the floorboards were missing; pieces of timber lay on the gap-toothed floor. He picked up a piece of wood to test his footing. As he straightened up, he saw the three bent nails still protruding from beneath the windowsill, like the legs of a rusty spider. So this was his room. What was that in the middle of the floor, where his bed had stood? He peered incredulously. His mouth filled with disgust. It was a heap of filth.
His father had beaten him several times for wetting his bed. Horridge had felt that that part of his body was out to get the better of him, to soil him. Now someone had fouled his room. Nothing could have robbed him of his house and all its memories more viciously.
As he stumbled forward inadvertently, he saw the cat. It was crouched in the corner nearest the door, waiting for him to vacate the doorway so that it could flee. It looked dirty and shapeless as the stuffing of the torn mattress. He knew that it was the culprit that had soiled his house.
He advanced delicately, raising the piece of wood. It seemed vitally important to kill the creature. He had almost reached it when it leapt. He whirled, and brought the club crashing down. It tore a hole in the wall; plaster rained on the boards. He heard the cat scuttling downstairs and out.
He stood in the derelict room, gnawing a splinter out of his hand. His teeth ripped at the skin, as though to drain his fury. “Filth. Filth. Filth,” he snarled.
He hurried to the dual carriageway. His limp swayed him violently, but his rage urged him on: he must be rid of it. He made himself wait for the pay tone before thrusting in the coin. “Just you remember I’m never far away,” he said without giving Craig a chance to speak, and felt powerful at once. “You’d be surprised how close I am to you.”
Chapter VIII
For the next few days he listened to the radio. Whenever it tried to sidle beyond audibility he reeled it back. Old Beatles songs. Music and memories of the thirties. Couldn’t they face up to the present? He listened to every news report – but there was no word of Craig.
He read the papers in Cantril Farm Library, but they had no more to offer. On an impulse he asked to see the voters’ list. There was his name, lined up with the rest, pinned down by its number. Each day he was first for the papers, until he found the man with the fishbowl eyes waiting at the table. Horridge left at once. He was taking no risks.
Of course Craig betrayed himself by his silence. Had he not been guilty, he would have reported the calls to the police. But mightn’t he have reported them? Might the police have forbidden the press to mention the calls, while they hunted the caller? Let them hunt. If they’d known where to find Horridge they would have arrested him by now. The listing of his name made him feel indefinably vulnerable.
Craig’s refusal to betray himself to witnesses frustrated him. He couldn’t call again, in case the police had tapped Craig’s phone. He must find another way to speed things up. Suppose they traced him somehow before Craig broke!
With the razor he cut out all the photographs of the victims from the newspapers. The photographs were too flimsy; they might be overlooked. On the kitchen windowsill he found an old tube of glue, curled up like a grub. He mounted the photographs on pieces of cardboard. That night he dreamed that he was playing in the quarry.