‘Oh, she looked lovely on telly the other night with Russell Harty. She’s going to play Peter Pan in the Christmas panto. I’m sure she’ll do it ever so much better than that rabbity Susan Hampshire. But I said to my mother. “She may be a great actress, but her tax is way overdue and she’s making our Mister Gawber sweat tears.” ’
‘Miss French, I think I should remind you that Miss Nightwing’s income tax is a confidential matter. She’s simply forgotten to send us details of her expenditure. Rumours could damage her reputation.’ He gave her a smile of rebuke. ‘Do let me handle it, won’t you?’
Miss French said, ‘They say she’s a communist. She wants to outlaw Punch and Judy shows. Says they’re cruel and decadent. Punch and Judy!’
He wanted to say how much they had frightened him as a child at the noisy fair in Ladywell Fields. He sighed, hearing Mister Punch’s reedy threats. The heat was a cloak that weighted his back and made him slump. He squinted and tasted dust and wished it would rain. He said, ‘I shall ring her.’
He dialled the number, but before it could ring the line seemed to burst and acquire an odd resonating clamour. In his ear, a male voice said, ‘That’s marathon, I’m sure.’
‘Monetary,’ said a woman.
‘Marathon.’
‘Monetary.’
Mr Gawber checked himself in an apology.
‘Not monetary.’
‘It fits. With tapir at seven down.’
‘Tapir perhaps. But what about that ovoid at eight down? That would put paid to your monetary.’
Mr Gawber saw. They were doing The Times crossword. He had put his paper away; it was his practice to do half of it on the way into work and complete it on the way home in the evening. He had got tapir, but not marathon. He listened, fascinated, as if to friends, fellow puzzlers. But his embarrassment grew — and something else bothered him about the crossed line: the man and woman seemed shut in the same cellar room, and their voices murmured as if lost in utter darkness.
‘All right, marathon,’ said the woman. ‘So with Elba at twenty-seven down and piano-tuner at sixteen across we’re left with that enormous blank at twelve across. Eight letters. Gosh.’
‘ “Bitten but —”.’
‘Please don’t read the clue again, Charles.’
‘I’m stumped.’
‘It looks easy enough.’
‘Second letter “a”, ending in “n”. Could be another marathon.’
Mr Gawber held the receiver away from his face and reached for his newspaper. He carried out the activity as if learning a stratagem. He was not used to deceptions. He turned the paper over and put his finger on twelve across. Of course.
‘You’re always saying how awfully good you are.’
‘Rubbish.’
‘You’re so full of corrections.’
‘I won’t listen to much more of this.’
‘If you could only hear yourself.’
The poor things, seeking the companionship of a puzzle in their darkness, had begun to row. Mr Gawber became anxious. He had been holding his breath for so long his eyes stung. The woman turned abusive; Mr Gawber blinked. He heard, ‘— bloody fed up,’ and took a deep breath.
‘The answer to twelve across,’ he intoned in a voice he did not recognize as his own, ‘is macaroon. Macaroon.’
‘Is that you, Charles?’
‘No, my dear — why it is macaroon!’
‘There’s someone on this line. Who’s there?’
The alert voice, a shaft from the darkness, spun a burr of panic at him.
‘Who’s there!’
Mr Gawber clapped the receiver down and covered his face with his hands. He felt that voice had been heard throughout Rackstraw’s. Shortly afterwards Miss French said, ‘Mister Gawber, you’re all flushed.’
He said it was the heat. He had done no damage, but the episode was shaming — he should have put the phone down at the beginning. He respected privacy. If, on a train, the person beside him took out a letter and began reading it Mr Gawber doubled up to convey the impression that he knew it was a letter and was not reading it — he reminded others of their privacy. And he had frightened those people: what were they saying about him now?
He did not touch the telephone again until after four, regarding it as a dangerous and unreliable instrument. But his in-tray still held the unfilled tax form of Araba Nightwing, and pinned to it a curt letter from Inland Revenue. He overcame his shyness and dialled the number again. It buzzed and was answered. He gave his name, apologized for his intrusion, and stated his business briefly.
‘I’m not paying,’ said the young woman in her famous voice.
‘It’s the law,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘We’ll have to get our skates on pretty smartly.’
‘Don’t they know — don’t you — there’s a war on!’
‘I couldn’t agree more —’
But the line had gone dead, and he was now enquiring in darkness himself: ‘Miss Nightwing?’
It had been an upsetting day, and not helped by the heat. Mr Gawber was glad to leave for home at five, to hurry away from the yakking that accused him of obscure errors. Lovely day, one woman says, smiling foolishly at the sun on the deranged street; Who’s there? demands the one on the crossed line; There’s a war on! the actress cries. These wrong voices moved through his mind, and he could not reply to any of them. For a moment in the cool stairwell at Rackstraw’s he felt his strength return. He damned them softly and wanted the city to be destroyed to silence them. It was coming, in any case: the thunderclap. He had seen the figures. Then he would walk out of the building, put his umbrella up, and cross the smoking rubble of the Strand, now an empty beach-head of destruction: the ruin proving him right.
But it was an idle thought; the spite was unworthy of him. He boarded the train and resumed the crossword, and minutes later — while the train was stalled on its approach to Waterloo — completed it with unusual speed: Elba, piano-tuner, marathon. Those strangers had made it easy for him. He drowsed in the crowded carriage and slept, while the evening papers crashed at his ears; he dreamed of the Queen, the sun, her body. New Cross, Lewisham, Ladywelclass="underline" still he slept, and at Catford Bridge, his stop, the Queen leaned towards him and tugged at the front of her glittering dress. The train raced on to Lower Sydenham, where he woke. The carriage was nearly empty and nothing outside had the smallest wrinkle of familiarity.
He walked down the platform with such uncertainty his shoes seemed too large for him. He was walking with another man’s feet. The name on the station signboard was recognizable, but this particle of the familiar in so strange a place confounded him. The platform had no roof, and when the train drew out it was empty — the other passengers had quickly deserted it. And yet he enjoyed it and was surprised to notice how he lingered to savour the feeling and acquaint himself with the station. He said to himself with wondering pleasure, ‘I’ve never been here before!’
Halfway down the platform a black man in a British Rail uniform was tipped against the door of a glassed-in waiting room. Mr Gawber saw that he was talking to a fat black woman who was seated on a bench with a basket between her spread knees, two dimpled aubergines. The man was making her laugh in a way that gagged her and shook the brown pads of her cheeks. It was a race of willing comics: he had never believed in their anger. His neighbours — Mr Wangoosa, the Aromas, the light brown Mr Palmerston, the almost purple Mr Churchill — positively skipped with good humour. The British Rail man yapped his lips, the woman’s laughter kicked in her throat and she raised her feet and stamped them. The glass door was cracked, the walls were daubed with large red names: ARSENAL RULE, CHELSEA FOREVER, SPURS WANK. But the black people inhabiting it with their chatter lent it an air of ramshackle charm. In another mood Mr Gawber would have seen it all as an example of decay pushing towards ruin. This summer evening it amused him and he felt able to share in their laughter.