Well, Audrey persists once Rosalind has left the room, did you — did you ever speak of him to your well-bred wife? Can you so much as bear to think of him, remember him? You may be a great computer, Bert, but there’re some things that can never be accounted for. Albert simply regards her, his pregnant eyes full of. . hatred, no, that’s too passionate for him — he never hates, only kills all insane persons in fact? Yes, in mercy and in justice to themselves . . At length he says, There is the matter of Collins and the Free State, some might consider it a war — a civil war indeed. Audrey says: Is that your view, Bert? Do you think the poor bloody Irish a sufficient cause of your coldness? Is it this that makes you such a white man? Albert blanches, his tone dulls and flattens still more lead flushing. I am not, he says, at the office this morning because this afternoon I shall be taking the boat train from Waterloo — there are cemeteries to be surveyed, sites for the monument and so forth —. He stops, seeing not his sister — her fiery auburn hair constrained, he has noted, to a fashionable bob — but the churned Flanders mud, sutured by white wooden crosses — and he hears not her but the silly ass of an architect he has to deal with, a dishevelled fellow who makes puns both excruciating and dishonourable — the Gate of Messiness is what he calls his own design! What’s in the mug? Audrey asks. Mug? he queries. Yes, the mug you had in your hand when I came in. He’s losing his hair, the brassy nob of his head shines through — losing his hair and gaining the weight of influence. . but he’s still tough. . still dangerous . .Albert picks up the tankard from the table where he’d placed it among a slew of his tools: metal rulers, propelling pencils, slide rules, dividers. . Audrey thinks: She hasn’t got the measure of him, he does as he pleases — always has. He’s taken this lovely house and started to clutter it up — she’ll go first, then he’ll fill it to the rafters with his jumble. Not that it’s confusing to him: he knows where ev-ery-thing is. . Am I right, sir? It’s a sort of tonic, Albert says gingerly, of my own, ah, devising. Audrey laughs. — Give over, Bert, what d’you mean by that? He peers into the tankard, then tilts it towards her so she can see the thick brown liquid it contains. It’s the black drop! she cries delightedly, and Albert says, Hardly, it’s a mixture of Bemax, molasses and some extracts of these new vit-a-mines together with my own, ah, solvent. She cackles again. — Solvent! Whass that when it’s at ’ome? Before answering her, he takes a long draught from the tankard — it leaves a sewerage mark around his shaved-beige lips: mercurochrome-brown with a cream foam rim. Milk stout, he says, wiping this off with his handkerchief, Huggins’ for preference — but Guinness if it isn’t to be had. Audrey splutters: You — You, you’re turnin’ inter the old man after all! For a time both are silent in contemplation of the Cheriton Bishop Deers, Samuel’s decline has been precipitate. . a downhill stampede — brakes on the ’bus failed, the heavy vehicle running down its own team. . shafts, then legs shattered. . rabbit-skin coat all torn and bloody. . horses squealereaming. . Only terminus likely: the knackers. Whatever else you may be, Bert, Audrey says presently, I never pegged you for a crank — and that word alone, crank, springs the lever from the cog, so that the balls of the horizontal pendulum begin to rotate beneath the glass dome of the clock on the mantel. A melodious chiming, d’ding-ding-ding, d’ding-ding-dong, summons Audrey to her feet — it had been growing within her these past few weeks, seizing at first a single hand or foot, clenching, then releasing it with the viciousness of an old. . enemy. To the model lighthouse, given to Albert De’Ath in his capacity as a Fellow of Trinity House, she charlestons, her legs propellering, and grasps the top of the tinplate tower. Aha! as she suspected: another cigarette case. She nips one from the hole directly into her mouth, then a second, then a third — fourth — fifth — sixth — all flung and lip-caught unerringly, Sorta fing the Brothers Luck did at Karno’s Fun Factory — there was six of ’em inall! She turns to show off her white fangs to her big brother, who backs towards the door so’s to give me more room — space that allows her to windmill her arms as well as her legs, to pluck up cushions from the sofas and chairs so that she may juggle with them, to take up handfuls of Albert’s pointed implements so that she may drum with them — such a turn! he ain’t about to stop me — and I can’t help meself! This wilfulness has been growing alongside the t-t-t-t-ticcing of her hands and the j-j-j-j-jerking of her neck — and now it occurs to her that this trip to Blackheath — unanticipated by her quite as much as by them — may be another instance of an action beyond her control that will be repeated again and again annagain. That she will find herself walking up Montpelier Row from the station, skirting the grassy edge of the heath, trotting up the stairs of the imposing house over and over anover, until the spring winds down and the penny peepshow snaps shut — except that this cannot happen, because, in the midst of all the fluttering, clawing and pecking of the intrepid birdwoman, other more sinister rhythms have begun to be imposed: the rotation of an historic flywheel, the pulling of an eternal lever, the lowering of that perspicacious thinker, the headstock. And this is no fun at all, these long-buried motions tearing through my skin. Audrey hears machine guns roaring and sees Rosalind coming back into the room, silly moo, judging from her expression, she’s never seen a good old-fashioned cockney clog dance before! — while as for the creature in her arms: thass no baby! ’e oughta be in trousies . .Oh, says Rosalind, Oh, Albert! She lays her hand across the little boy’s eyes to hide this sight: not a woman — a puppet heaving rocks, and then, when the thing begins to scream, Don’t av any more, Missus Moore, Don’t av any more, Missus Moore, Rosalind presses his tousled head to her breast and claps her hand to his other ear. Oh, Albert! resonates into the child’s mind followed by Poor Peterkins! — which is him, or some other little boy with the same name who sits inside his mother’s soft bits more closely held, more deeply loved.
Tactically, the De’Aths withdraw to the hallway, where Rose the parlour maid stands with handfuls of apron and jaw dropping — others of the domestics have, equally tactically, made themselves scarce. Alone in the tumult of her thoughts and limbs, as she turns this, the most vital fuse cap of the entire never-ending war, Audrey hears these sounds above the screeching of her lathe: a man crying Fre-esh fi-ish! again and again from the road outside, the gentle whinny of his horse, the lifting of the earpiece, the sinisterly abrasive return of the sprung dial, the menacing conformity of her brother’s voice saying, Hello, would you kindly connect me to the R Division station at Blackheath Road? I think you’ll find that the number is two-one-six-nought availeth me, Busner thinks, and then: Misunderstood visions and the faces of clocks. He had left the car at the park gates, intending to take a walk to