A Demon in My View (11 page)

Arthur didn’t question what he was doing there or how he had come to be involved in this childish display. He realised only that no man can be in two places at once. If Anthony Johnson was here—from the way the children cheered, an evident master
of ceremonies—he couldn’t also be at 142 Trinity Road. It looked as if he would be here for hours, and during those hours the cellar would be private and unobserved. It would be dark and very cold, solitudinous but, on this night of sporadic violent sound, sufficiently within the world to touch his fantasy with a greater than usual measure of reality.

A kind of joy that was both intense and languid filled his whole being. Until that moment he had hardly realised to the full how insistently urgent his need for the woman in the cellar was. None of his dreams, none of his frustration, had brought it home to him as the sight of Anthony Johnson, striking his first match, applying it to the timber, now did. But as he savoured his anticipation and felt it mount, he knew he must let it mount to its zenith. He had time, a lot of time. The culmination and the release would be all the greater for being sensuously deferred.

He stood there, trembling again but now with ecstasy. And he had no fear of the dark or its temptations. Happiness, contentment, was in watching Anthony Johnson apply match after match to that stack of wood until the flames began to leap, to crackle and to roar through the pyramid. As the fire became established, a sheet of it licking the feet of the guy, the first fireworks went off. A rocket rose in a scream of sparks, and along the fence, under the supervision of the black man, a child ignited the first in a long row of Catherine wheels. One after another they rotated in red and yellow flames. And those paler, stronger flames climbed across the guy’s legs, shooting long tongues across the black suit in which it was clothed, until they leapt to its face and head, spitting through its eye sockets, catching the straw hat and roaring through its crown.

The hat toppled off. The suit burned and fell away. There was a grotesque indecency in the way white limbs, long and smooth and glossy, lashed from under the burning material until the fire caught them and began to consume them also. Arthur came closer to the wire. His hands gripped the rusty cold wire. The mask was now a glowing mass that flew suddenly from the face and rose like a firework itself before eddying in sparks to the ground. A child screamed and its mother pulled it clear.

The flames teased the naked face. It wasn’t a man’s face but a woman’s, pale, blank, even beautiful in its utter dead calm expressionlessness.
It seemed to move and come closer to Arthur until he could see nothing, no people, no cascading colour, no smoke, nothing but that familiar and beloved face. Then it was still and calm no longer. It arched back as if in parody of those burned at the stake. The great rent under its chin opened, gaped wide like a razor-made slash, and the fire took it, bursting with a hiss through the tear and roasting with a kind of lust the twisted face.

His white lady, his Auntie Gracie, his guardian angel …

The house at 142 Trinity Road was unlit, every street-overlooking window a glaze of blackness between dim drifts of curtain. The curtains on the top floor shimmered whitely like the lacy ball gowns of women who wait in vain to be asked to dance. Inside the house there was total, breathless silence. Arthur, leaning against the banisters, his hot forehead against cold smooth wood, thought he had never known it so silent—no tap of heels, no soft giggles, mutter of words, whistle of kettles, trickle of water, throb of heaters, thud of door, heartbeat of life. It was as if it had retreated into sleep, but the sleep of an animal which is awakened at once by the smallest sound or movement. He could awaken the house by going upstairs and setting in motion all the processes of a routine evening. He could switch lights on, fill his kettle, turn on the television, turn down his bed, close the bedroom window—and look down into that court, at last unlighted, but dispossessed for ever of its lure.

Rage seized him. He put on the hall light and took a few steps towards the door of Room 2. To destroy property was foreign to his nature, property was what he respected, but now if he could get into that room, he would, he thought, destroy Anthony Johnson’s books. One after another he pulled open the drawers in Stanley Caspian’s desk. Stanley had been known to leave duplicate keys lying about there, but they were empty now of everything except screwed-up pieces of paper and bits of string. Yet he must have revenge, for he had no doubt that Anthony Johnson had performed an act of revenge against him. All these weeks Anthony Johnson had been harbouring against him a
grudge—hadn’t everything in his behaviour shown it?—because he had opened that letter from the council. Now it was his turn, he who had done his best to make amends. Now some act must be performed of like magnitude. But what?

Turning away from the desk and the door of Room 2, his eye fell on the hall table. Something seemed to clutch at his chest, squeezing his ribs. All the letters were still there, undisturbed; the bill for Brian Kotowsky, the official-looking correspondence for Winston Mervyn, the mauve-grey envelope from Bristol for Anthony Johnson. No one had returned to the house since that morning, no one had removed a letter. Arthur put his hand over the Bristol envelope, covering it. A light, constant tremor animated his hand, a tremor that had been there, electrifying his hands and his body with a delicate, frenetic throb from the moment he had witnessed that fire and its consequences. Blood beat in his head as if it were feeding an engine.

He thought now of the telephone call he had overheard. “Your next letter’s our last chance.…” Her next letter. It lay under his trembling hand. Arthur lifted it up, holding it by its edge as if its centre were red-hot. Words of Auntie Gracie’s trickled across his brain.

“Other people’s correspondence is sacrosanct, Arthur. To open someone else’s letter is the action of a thief.”

But she was gone from him, never more to guard him, never more to watch and save.… He ripped open the envelope, splitting it so savagely that it tore into two pieces. He pulled the letter out. It was typewritten, not on mauve-grey paper but on flimsy such as is used for duplicates, and the machine was an Adler Standard like the one in his office at Grainger’s.

   
Darling Tony, I think I’ve changed a lot since I spoke to you. Perhaps I’ve grown up. Suddenly I realised when you put the phone down that you were right, I can’t hover and play this insane double game any more. It came quite clearly to me that I have to choose directly between you and Roger. I would have called you back then and there, but I don’t know your number—isn’t that absurd? I only know your landlord’s got a name like a river or a sea
.

I have chosen, Tony. I’ve chosen you, absolutely and finally
.
For ever? I hope so. But I promised
for ever
once before, so I’m chary of making that vast dreadful promise again. But I will leave Roger and I will marry you if you still want me
.

Don’t be angry, I haven’t told Roger yet. I’m afraid, of course I am, but it isn’t only that. I can’t tell him I’m leaving him without having anywhere to go or anyone to go to. All you have to do for me to tell him is to write—write to me at work—and let me know where and when to meet you. If my letter gets to you by Tuesday, you should be able to get yours to me by Friday at the latest. Of course, what I really mean is I want word from you that you aren’t too disgusted with me to need me any more. I will do whatever you say. Command me
.

Tony, forgive me. I have played fast and loose with you like “a right gypsy.” But no longer. We could be together by Saturday. Say we will be and I will come even if I have to run from Roger in my nightdress. I will be another Mary Stuart and follow you to the ends of the earth in my shift. I love you. H
.

   Arthur felt a surge of power. Just as the control of his destiny, his peace, had lain in Anthony Johnson’s hands, so the other man’s now lay in his. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Anthony Johnson had taken away his white lady; now he would take from Anthony Johnson
his
woman, rob him as he had been robbed of his last chance.

He screwed up the letter and envelope and thrust them into his pocket. He walked down the hall and came to the foot of the stairs. How terrible and beautiful the silence was! With something like anguish, he thought of the cellar, unguarded, unwatched. Wasn’t it possible he could still get some relief from it, from its atmosphere that had fed his fantasy, from an imagination that could still perhaps provide, furnishing her absence with vision and empty air with flesh? He turned off the light, left the house and made his way down the side passage. But he had no torch, only a box of matches in his pocket. One of these he lit as he passed through the first and second rooms. He lit another and in its flare saw the heap of clothes on the floor, Auntie Gracie’s dress, the bag, the shoes, and scattered all of them like so much trash as if they had never clothed a passion.

It was the death of a fantasy. His imagination shrivelled, and
he was just an embittered man in a dirty cellar looking at a pile of old clothes. The match burned down in his fingers; its flame caught the box which suddenly flared into a small brilliant fire. Arthur dropped it, stamped on it. He caught his breath on a sob in the darkness, stumbled back through the thick darkness, feeling his way to the steps.

Through the passage to the front he walked. He turned to the right, crossed the grass, set his foot on the bottom step. Like others before him, he would have been safe if he had not paused and looked back. The mouth of the dark opened and called him. The jaws of darkness received him, the streets received him, taking him into their arteries like a grain of poison.

   The tables were bare, the fire had burned out, and the only fireworks which remained were those sparklers which are safe for children to hold in their hands. Only they and the stars now glittered over the frosty, debris-scattered ground. Linthea had stacked her crockery into the barrow and now, having collected her son and Steve, left them with a wave and one of her radiant smiles.

Anthony and Winston Mervyn began dismantling the trestle tables which they would return to All Souls’ hall. The last of the fire, a fading glow, dying into handfuls of dust, held enough heat to warm them as they worked. Winston, who seemed preoccupied, said something in a language Anthony recognised for what it was, though the words were unintelligible.

“What did you say?”

Winston laughed and translated. “Look at the stars, my star. Would I were the heavens that I might look at you with many eyes.”

“Amazing bloke, you are. I suppose you’ll turn out to be a professor of Greek.”

“I thought of doing that,” Winston said seriously, “but there’s more money in figures than in Aristotle. I’m an accountant.” Anthony raised his eyebrows but he didn’t say what he wanted to, why was an accountant living at that grotty hole in Trinity
Road? “Easy does it,” said Winston. “You take that end and I’ll go ahead.”

They carried the tables up Magdalen Hill and along Balliol Street. A Roman candle, ignited outside the Waterlily, illuminated in a green flash the cavelike interior of Oriel Mews. Anthony, walking behind Winston, realised that although he had been told what Winston had quoted, he hadn’t been told why he chose to quote it. All Souls’ caretaker took the tables from them, and Winston suggested a drink in the Waterlily. Anthony said all right but he’d like to go home first as he was expecting an important letter.

A hundred and forty-two was a blank, dark smudge in a street of lighted houses. Winston went in first. He picked up his letters from the table. There was nothing for Anthony. Well, Helen’s letter didn’t always come on a Tuesday. It would come tomorrow.

“That’s more like it,” said Winston. “I might get along and look at that tomorrow.” He passed a printed sheet to Anthony, who saw it was an estate agent’s specification of a house in North Kenbourne, the best part. The price was twenty thousand pounds.

“You’re a mystery,” he said.

“No, I’m not. Because I’m coloured you expect me to be uneducated, and because I live here you expect me to be poor.”

Anthony opened his mouth to say this was neither true nor fair, but he knew it was, so he said, “I reckon I do. Sorry.”

“I came to live here because my firm moved to London and now I’m looking for a house to buy.”

“You’re not married, are you?”

“Oh no, I’m not married,” said Winston. “Let’s go, shall we?”

Going out, they met Brian Kotowsky coming in.

“You look thirsty,” said Brian. “Me, I’m always thirsty. How about going across the road and seeing if we can find an oasis?”

There was no way of getting rid of him. He trotted along beside them, talking peevishly of Jonathan Dean, whom, he said, he hadn’t seen since the other man moved away. This was because Jonathan and Vesta disliked each other. Brian was positive Jonathan had phoned, but Vesta had always taken the calls and refused to tell him out of spite. They walked through the mews
which smelt of gunpowder and entered the Waterlily just before nine o’clock.

In another public house, the Grand Duke, in a distant part of Kenbourne, Arthur sat alone at a table, drinking brandy. A small brandy with a splash of soda. When first he had set out on this nocturnal walk he had been terrified—of himself. But gradually that fear had been conquered by the interest of the streets, by the changes which had come to them, by the squalid glitter of them, by the lonely places at which alley mouths and mews arches and paths leading to little yards hinted like whispers in the dark. He hadn’t forgotten, in twenty years, the geography of this place where he had been born. And how many of the warrens, the labyrinths of lanes twisting across lanes, still remained behind new, soaring façades! The air was smoky, acrid with the stench of fireworks, but now, at half-past nine, there were few people about. It excited Arthur to find himself, during that long walk, often the only pedestrian in some wide, empty space, lividly lighted, swept by car lights, yet sprawled over with shadows and bordered with caverns and passages penetrating the high frowning walls.