Hester laughed, but looked at him with the patient air of the school teacher who is determined to persevere. “Harry, you’re better than that. You must be. Don’t you think if you had a place to work, and someone who believed in your work…”
“These things have ruined many a prosaic man. If you can’t write poetry against every kind of handicap, you can’t write it at all. I’m like a lot of other people, Hester. I’m a genius with four or five pieces left out. Do you love me, Hester?” he asked sadly.
“I think perhaps I do, Harry,” she said dubiously, the determination fading from her voice as she began to consider her own position instead of his.
“No, you don’t love me. You love the four or five missing pieces. You think I’ve only mislaid them.”
“Very well. You’re determined to believe you’re no good and that I don’t love you. It must be hard work, being so hopeless.”
“But I’m not hopeless,” he said, looking suddenly happy and excited. “Everything’s going to be fine, soon. I have some easy money coming.”
“Easy money!” she said furiously. “I’m sick of the sound of it. Go away, Harry. Father said I wasn’t to speak to you, and Maurice is coming. Go away!” She ran out of the room and upstairs to her bedroom. She needed a few minutes out of earshot of all the discussions about money and love.
THURSDAY (7)
THE gate that led to Tower House was unpainted and had the same derelict, sagging appearance as the house itself. The young man who waited beside the gate had been examining the house for half-an-hour. As he had nothing else to do while he waited, he had made imaginary arrangements for the reconstruction of the house, scraping away the ivy from the walls; cutting down the trees that grew too close; rebuilding the mildewed north wall; extending the sloping roof to cover a new garage; modernising the tangle of drain-pipes. On the south side the ground-floor windows and most of the wall could be cut away, and replaced by sliding glass doors leading on to a sun balcony.
“Hell, it would be better to tear the whole place down and begin again,” he said contemptuously to himself, and felt in his pocket for another cigarette. He heard the car coming, and took his hand slowly from his pocket. He stepped back into the cover of the trees and waited until the car drew up before the gate. Then he stepped forward.
“Don’t bother, I’ll open the gate,” he said. He looked into the car. “Well, if it isn’t Maurice Reid, my old friend,” he said with enormous satisfaction.
Maurice looked at him, with a humorous, apologetic, lift of the eyebrows. He took his hands from the wheel, and tucked the rosebud that was slipping from his button-hole back into place.
“I’m afraid I don’t know you. I think you’ve made a mistake.”
“A mistake? I’ve seen your face over my bed every night for years. Sometimes I see it very small and dream of stamping on it until the filthy grin is squashed as flat as a frog under a tractor; and sometimes I see it very big, springing backwards and forwards like a punching ball every time I hit it.”
Maurice looked at the gate, then back quickly over his shoulder. There was no room to turn. He couldn’t get back on the road without reversing.
“Open the door,” the young man said. “We’re going for a drive.”
“I’m afraid – I’m in a hurry – you can’t get in my car.”
“Take your hands away from the wheel or I’ll break your arm. Open the door.”
Maurice dropped his hands. “I don’t know you,” he repeated hopelessly.
“Open the door.”
Maurice leant across and opened the door. “If you insist,” he said, smiling.
The stranger stepped in quickly, and slammed the door. “Now we’ll go for our ride. Somewhere quiet. Back into the road again, turn right, keep going for about half-a-mile then you’ll find a lane to pull into. You can stop there. Get on with it now. I’ll talk.”
Maurice put the car in reverse and wavered backwards away from the gate. He looked once at the other man and smiled with a kind of humorous resignation.
“I haven’t made up my mind if I’m going to break your neck or only beat you up,” the stranger said. “Turn right, now. I don’t know what satisfaction there would be in beating you up. I’ve thought about it a lot. You wouldn’t fight back. It would be like hitting a woman. But I may do it.”
“I think you’re mad,” Maurice said. “Before God, I swear I don’t know you.”
“My name is Marryatt.”
“I’ve never known anyone called Marryatt.”
“My mother married twice.”
Maurice stopped the car and leant back in his seat. “I can’t drive on,” he said in an exhausted voice.
“Ask what my mother’s name was.”
“No.”
“Don’t you want to hear it?”
“Why should I know your mother?”
“You were going to marry her once. Now tell me her name.”
“I don’t know it.”
“Surely you know the name of the woman you were going to marry?”
“I don’t know it. I don’t know it. Leave me alone.”
“Tell me her name. You were going to marry her, but first you took all her money, to invest for her. You took her money and went away. Now tell me her name?”
“For God’s sake, I don’t know it. You’re mad.”
“Then tell me the names of all the women you’ve been going to marry.”
Maurice didn’t answer.
“Have there been too many?”
Maurice shook his head.
“Get out of the car. I said get out of the car.”
Maurice sat still.
The other man hit him on the face with the back of his hand. Maurice got out of the car.
“Now tell me my mother’s name.”
“I don’t know it.” He looked down at his feet, where his long, sunset shadow started across the road, and the other shadow bent grotesquely and swung its gibbon arm. He turned to run and was hit on the side of the head as he turned. He fell and was picked up again.
“My mother’s name.”
“Evans,” he whispered hopelessly. “Was it Evans?”
“Did she have a son?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. No, she hadn’t.”
“Then I’ll have to take on his duties and hit you.”
“No,” Maurice said. He began to walk backwards. “No, no, don’t hit me. Help!” he shouted. “Help!” He looked round over his shoulder. The pale smoke from a cottage chimney drifted towards the pale sky. In the field beside the road a sheep raised its head, appeared to give Maurice its critical attention, then turned and jogged away across the grass. The other man drew back and Maurice put his arms over his face. He was hit on the side, just above the heart. He took a step backwards with his feet crossing, then collapsed.
“Get up.”
He groaned and didn’t move.
“Tell me my mother’s name.”
“Was she – was she an Australian?”
Marryatt put out one hand and hauled Maurice to his feet. “Now, or I’ll kick you till you can’t speak,” he said.
“She was called Fletcher, was she?” Maurice asked, choking. “Yes. She had a son.”
“Go on.”
“She had a son at school. It was a long time ago. Ten, twelve years ago. I don’t think I ever met him.”
“Oh, yes you did. It was twelve years ago. I was fifteen. I only saw you twice. You took every pound she had. Do you think I’d forget you? Then she was ill, and a year later she died. Did you know that? Did you know you were a murderer? What did you do with the money?”