‘No, it is not,’ said Mr Gawber. ‘There is a great deal of concern. The market is extremely shaky, and I assure you’ — now he was speaking over squawks of protest — ‘I assure you we’ll have to tighten our belts.’ He put the phone down, silencing the squawks.
That was at nine-thirty, and it stirred him. It triggered compassion: he wondered if he had been too harsh. He buzzed Miss French and said, ‘No visitors, no phone-calls. I’m in purdah. But Monty can bring my tea as usual.’
‘I’ll see that you’re not disturbed,’ said Miss French.
‘You’re so kind.’
He spent the rest of the morning rubbing his eyes, anxiously rehearsing his visit to Albacore Crescent. The ride to Deptford on the Number One bus; the walk up the rising street to the red brick terrace; his arrival; his explanation. His instinct was towards the making of plans, the whole of his life a simple mapping to avoid embarrassment. To be anonymous was to be independent: he had no craving to be singled out by fame or wealth. He did not want surprises to fuel his distraction.
He was anxious because he had been thwarted once before. The last time, unprepared, he had met Araba wearing that drab, unbecoming costume; and the further surprise, Lady Arrow playing hostess. How small London was in these days of distress! He had taken himself away, feeling lamed and foolish. No one had spoken of the very person who belonged there; but where was Mister Hood, and why had he cancelled his standing order with the bank? The young man had left no instructions, his affairs were already in a muddle; the lump sum, which should have been on fixed deposit was dwindling in a current account. Americans were so careless with their money, and the shrinkage alarmed Mr Gawber who from the first had felt almost fatherly towards him. The thought occurred to Mr Gawber that he might meet Araba or Lady Arrow at the house once more. There again, some preparation was required. The one’s income tax was still unpaid, a further demand from Inland Revenue in the pending tray; the other’s insurance claim for the stolen painting wanted an underwriter’s verification. Loose ends, loose ends; and the storm cone approaching as a December shadow hung over the city — a stillness, like the sacking of cloud, warning of a winter that might never end. England tossed; adrift, dismasted.
The calamity was news. The crossed-lines had picked it up. And the previous week a television programme he had watched with Norah foretold a new ice-age. Changes in the sea-currents, freak weather, desert where there had been flowers: the planet was gripped. There had been pictures of Africans — perhaps relatives of the very Mr Wangoosa who lived in style at number thirty — starving and watching with incomprehension as the sand beat their tents to shreds; skinny livestock with sad sick eyes; children with stick-like limbs and swollen bellies. He wanted to cry. The programme had shown a model globe wearing a thickness of ice like a cricketer’s cap. Predictably, there were the historical snippets: snow on the dome of St Paul’s, steel engravings of the Thames frozen over — a fairground in mid-stream, children skimming, a coach-and-four crossing the ice to Westminster. And this morning a Times leader about the coming ice-age, matching in gloom the Financial Times Share Index which had dropped again to its lowest level ever (each day that precise phrase), plunging like a barometer. ‘It’s like the Thirties,’ Monty said. And the office chorus, ‘Terrifying.’ But Thornquist and Miss French were comfortable for the moment, and they didn’t know that terrifying, a humbug word for the pickle they imagined, would not describe the unspeakable hunger and confusion, the nakedness of the event that he had already witnessed beginning.
And strange, this was his season. He had always liked — in the same degree that others hated — the days darkening into winter. Norah feared them. To her, winter was a cold tunnel she might never clear, and lately she had begun to remark on how progressively dark it was getting, how they had their tea at night. She had spent her life waiting for the sun to reach her windows; there was nothing more for her: life was a matter of temperature. She had said a thousand times, ‘I’d like to live in a country where the sun was always shining.’ Mr Wangoosa’s country? Mr Aroma’s? Churchill’s Tobago? Palmerston’s Jamaica? But he bore her yearning with politeness, adding only that hot countries were governed by torturers. He saw her as similar in some ways to the African savage who allowed the riddle of the weather to foreshorten his existence and alter his mood until — and like those pathetic blacks in the television programme — poor Norah would simply sit in the dark and wait to die. But he could not mock Norah. He too had his fantasies, and he imagined death to be something like sitting on the top deck of a Number One bus on a December afternoon, the shop lights flaring and blazing at the windows, the black conductor grinning; a red catafalque racing him into darkness. It was death: you did not get off.
He felt it now; he was on that bus. A month ago he had travelled this way and had seen it all. But today he was reprieved. He alighted at Deptford without incident, deposited his flimsy ticket in the litter bin and started up the street. It was as he remembered it, only drearier. And gusty: the people hurried, simulating panic, as they always seemed to do on windy days. His gloom was deepened when at the brick wall with the torn circus poster — wagging tongues of paper — he saw the words that never failed to still his heart with ice: ARSENAL RULE. A necessary landmark, and yet he wished he had not seen it.
He was rising on the road. The sounds of the river reached him with greater clarity, a boat’s steady poop and a distant hammering at Millwall borne across the water. He gained Ship Street and turned into Albacore Crescent, walked halfway up and stopped. Without the slightest warning, and just as he had once witnessed the demolition of Mortimer Lodge — that embarrassing misapprehension — he imagined number twenty-two bursting into flames. The roof caved in, the windows splintered, and a lighted cloud of bursting sparks and brick fragments was released. A cylinder of horrible fire heated his face. And then, as he watched, the flames died, the splinters met, and every brick fell back into place until the house regained its former solidity and was whole. But there were scorch marks above the windows; had they been there before?
The vision jarred him, and his heart was ticking rapidly as he mounted the steps and rang the bell. The echo droned on; he listened for footsteps, but he was sure on the second ring that the house was empty. No bell sounded louder or more mournful than one in an empty house.
As he turned to go he put his hand on the knob and pushed the door open. From this doorway to the back of the house there was emptiness — none of the clutter he’d seen before, and only the faintest smell of tobacco mingled with dust. Cold air, a wave of it, rolled past him from the creepy interior. He stepped inside and shut the door. A hum, like an electric purr, made him stop; but the hum was in his head, not in the house. He peeked into the living-room: two chairs, no cushions, bare walls. The dining room held a scarred table, and scabs of soot had fallen down the chimney and littered the linoleum in front of the fireplace. The kitchen was empty. He stepped into the back room, a floorboard gave under his foot and for a split-second he was on his way, careering through the first inch of a black hole.
He went upstairs, disturbed by the oafishness of his own banging steps, paused on the landing, and tip-toed down the hall. Then to the top of the house, three rooms: empty.
But as he paused again his mind strayed. The front door had been unlocked: the house could not be empty. He recalled the closed room he had hurried past on the floor below. Not the bathroom, which was shut as if engaged: he could smell the soap. One looked in a bathroom at one’s peril; but that other room?