The Nice and the Good (30 page)

Mary sat down on the bed and looked at Ducane who was standing by the window frowning and still holding the whip. He shrugged his shoulders suddenly and tossed it on to the table and then crossed his two hands over his forehead covering his eyes.

“You’re upset,” said Mary. “Oh don’t be! Do you imagine I’m going to be cross with you?”

“No, no. I’m upset about something, I’m not even sure what. I suppose Pierce will hate me for this.”

“He’s just as likely to love you for it. Young people have a strange psychology.”

“
All
people have a strange psychology,” said Ducane. He sat down at the table and regarded Mary. His rather round blue eyes, so markedly blue now in his bony sunburnt face, stared at Mary with a sort of puzzlement and he thrust back the limp locks of dark brown hair with a quick rhythmical movement. Mary studied him. What was the matter?

“I’m sorry,” said Ducane after a moment. “I’m just having a crisis of dissatisfaction with myself and I want sympathy. One always asks for sympathy when one least deserves it.”

He’s missing Kate, Mary thought. She said, “I’m sure
you
have little reason to be dissatisfied with yourself, John. But let me sympathise. Tell me what’s the matter.”

Ducane’s blue eyes became yet rounder with what looked like alarm. He started to speak, stopped, and then said, “How old is Pierce?”

“Fifteen.”

“I ought to have got to know him better.”

“I hope you will. But you can’t look after everyone, John.”

“You see me as always looking after people?”

“Well, yes—”

“God!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s all right. He’s a very reserved child.”

“He’s been a long time without a father, too many years just with me.”

“How old was he when his father died?”

“Two.”

“So he scarcely remembers him.”

“Scarcely.”

“What was your husband’s name, Mary?”

Oh God, thought Mary, I can’t talk to him about Alistair. She recognized that particular coaxing intentness in Ducane’s manner, his way of questioning people with close attention so as to make them tell him everything about themselves, which they usually turned out to be all too ready to do. She had seen him doing this to other people, even at dinner parties. He had never done it to her. She thought, I won’t tell him anything, I’ve never talked to anyone about this, I won’t talk to him. She said, “Alistair”. The name came out into the room, an alien gobbet floating away into the air, drifting back again, hovering just above the level of her eyes.

“What did he do? I don’t think I ever knew his profession.”

“He was a chartered accountant.”

“Does Pierce resemble him?”

“To look at, yes, though Alistair was taller. Not in temper.”

“What sort of person was he?”

I can’t go on with this, thought Mary. How could she say, he was a funny man, always making puns. He was gay. He sang so beautifully. He was a universal artist. He was a failure. She said, “He wrote a novel.”

“Was it published?”

“No. It was no good.” Mary had spent part of yesterday reading Alistair’s novel. She had taken out the huge typescript with the intention of destroying it but had found
herself unable to. It was so bad, so childish, so like Alistair.

“He died young,” said Ducane softly. “He might have done better, he might have done much better.”

Mary supposed this was true. It was not a thing that she felt. Perhaps it was unfair to dub him a failure. Yet somehow the judgment was absolute.

“What did he die of?” said Ducane in the soft coaxing voice.

Mary was silent. A black wall rose up in front of her. She was coming nearer and nearer and looking into the blackness. She stared into it, she entered it. She said in an almost dreamy voice, “He was run over by a car one evening just outside our house. I saw it happen.”

“Oh—I’m sorry—was he—killed at once?”

“No.” She recalled his cries, the long wait for the ambulance, the crowd, the long wait in the hospital.

“I’m sorry, Mary,” said Ducane. “I’m being—”

“It was the accidentalness of it,” she said. “Sometimes I’ve nearly gone mad just thinking of it. That it should be so
accidental
. If I’d just said another sentence to him before he went out of the room, if he’d just stopped to tie his shoe lace, anything, and oh God, we’d just been
quarrelling
, and I let him go away without a word, if I’d only called him back, but he went straight out all upset and the car went over him. If he’d died of an illness or even been killed in the war somewhere far away where I couldn’t know I could have felt it was inevitable, but to have him killed there accidentally in front of my eyes, I couldn’t bear it, I’ve never told anyone how he died, I told Kate and Paula he died of pneumonia and I told Pierce that too. Pierce slept through it all in an upstairs room. I loved him, of course I loved him, but never quite enough or in the right way, and I haven’t been able to think of him properly since, and it’s somehow because of that awful accident, because things were cut off in that particular way, it made all our life together seem meaningless, and I haven’t been able to feel properly about him, it’s as if he were changed into some awful ghost with which I can’t make any peace. I remember an awful feeling I had when I was going through his clothes afterwards as if he were watching me, all sad and deprived and unappeased, and I’ve had that feeling since, it comes
at odd times in the evening, and I feel as if he still wants my love and I can’t give it to him. I see his faults and his weaknesses now and what made me love him has faded utterly. It’s terrible that one doesn’t love people forever. I should have gone on loving him, it’s the only thing I can do for him any more, and I have tried, but one can’t love in a void, one can’t love a sort of nothing for which one can’t do anything
else
, and there’s nothing left any more except the novel and that’s so terribly silly and yet it’s him in a way. If only it hadn’t happened like
that
, so suddenly and all by chance, he walked straight out and under the car. You see, so few cars came down our road—”

“Don’t cry so, Mary,” said Ducane. He moved beside her on to the bed and put an arm round her shoulder. “Chance is really harder to bear than mortality, and it’s
all
chance my dear, even what seems most inevitable. It’s not easy to do, but one must accept it as one accepts one’s losses and one’s past. Don’t try to see him. Just love him. Perhaps you never altogether knew him. Now his mystery is free of you. Respect it, and don’t try to see any more. Love can’t always do work. Sometimes it just has to look into the darkness. Keep looking and don’t be afraid. There are no demons there.”

“Words, John,” said Mary. “Words, words, words.” But she let herself be comforted by them, and felt that the tears were really for Alistair which she was weeping now.

“M
IND
the steps, Sir. This bit’s rather slimy. Better take my hand.”

The slowly moving circle of light from the torch revealed a short flight of steps sheeted over with a fungoid veneer of damp dust. There was a pattern of footprints in the centre, and tangles of dangling black threads at the side. Beyond them a concrete ramp went on down into the darkness.

Ducane steadied himself by pressing his knuckles against the cold brick wall. He did not want to touch McGrath who was just in front of him. They descended slowly as far as the concrete.

“You say Mr Radeechy told you to cut the electric cable at the top of the passage, where we left the air-raid shelters?”

“That’s right, Sir. Mr Radeechy liked it all to be by candle light. I think he thought it was safer too, you know, in case anyone came.”

“Was the door we’ve just come through usually locked?”

“Yes, Sir. Mr R. had a key and he gave me a key.”

“Did you ever come down here without him?”

“I hardly ever came down here with him, Sir. I just left the stuff ready for him and cleared off. He didn’t want me around when he was at it.”

“Go on, man, lead on, don’t just block the way.”

“Are you all right, Sir?”

“Of course I’m all right. Go on.”

The wavering light of the torch undulated forward suggesting a vista of a narrow extended sloping rectangular slot of red brick with a dark ending. Several black pipes, bunched into the corner of the roof and joined together by a heavy sacking of cobwebs, led down into the darkness. The effect was of the entrance to an ancient sepulchre and it was hard to believe that the corridors of a government department were only at a few minutes’ distance.

“Did you lock the door at the top behind us?” Ducane asked. He found that he was speaking in a low voice. The concrete ramp was slightly sticky as well, and footsteps made
a faint soft kissing sound. A very low almost inaudible hum seemed to be coming out of the black pipes.

“Yes, Sir. I hope that was right, Sir? I thought we wouldn’t want to be interrupted down here, Sir, any more than Mr R!”

“Well, don’t lose the key.”

“We’d be in a rare fix then, wouldn’t we, Sir! No one comes near that door. We could be down here for ever and no one the wiser.”

“Get on, get on. Are we nearly there?”

“Nearly. Not that way, Sir. Straight on.”

A narrow black doorway had appeared on the right of the passage.

“Where does that lead to?”

“Lord, Sir, I don’t know. I didn’t go exploring down here. It’s not a very nice place, especially when you’re by yourself. I went down to the room and up again as quickly as I could. You aren’t nervous, are you, Sir?”

“Of course not. Don’t wave the torch about so, keep it down.”

The shape of the passage and the sharp angle of descent was reminding Ducane of kings’ tombs he had visited in Greece and Egypt. He thought, I ought to have brought a torch of my own. Then he thought, I ought to have told someone I was coming down here. There was no need for secrecy. I didn’t realise what it would be like. Suppose we do lose the key? Suppose we get separated, suppose we get lost? These passages can’t lead to more air raid shelters, we’ve left the air-raid shelters behind, we’re at much too low a level now. It’s more likely that this is some disused part of the Underground or something to do with the sewers.

“It’s steep again here, Sir, and more steps, watch out. Not straight on, this way now, follow me. Now this passage on the left. Keep close.”

“Ever see any rats down here?” Ducane had a horror of rats. He was as close as he could be now on McGrath’s heels without touching him.

“I saw one once, Sir, a big fat fellow. Mr R. saw several. He asked me to get some biscuit tins and that to keep the stuff in. He was afraid the rats might eat it, you see. Left again, Sir.”

“Are you sure you know the way?”

“Quite sure, Sir. A bit eerie, isn’t it? Just like the catacombs I should think. Here we are arrived. Could you hold the torch now while I use the other key?”

They had reached a closed door. Ducane took a firm hold on the torch. Was the battery not perceptibly fainter? He moved the torch, revealing a black close-fitting well-painted door and McGrath’s red-golden head stooped over the keyhole. McGrath’s hairs glistened like burnished wire in the close light. The door gave silently.

“That’s right. Give me the torch, Sir.”

“I’ll keep the torch,” said Ducane.

McGrath moved through the opening and Ducane followed, stepping carefully. There was a very unpleasant smell.

“Well, here we are, Sir, in the holy of holies.” The door clicked to behind them.

Ducane began to shine the torch about the room but the first thing revealed by it was McGrath. Again Ducane was struck by the intense colour of the man’s hair. The light blue eyes stared back. There was a moment of stillness. Then Ducane moved to examine the room. The curious idea had occurred to him: this man could murder me down here and no one would ever know. He did not turn his back on McGrath.

The room was a plain fifteen-foot cube with a concrete floor. One wall appeared to be covered with a whitish paper, the other walls and the ceiling were red brick. A trio of black pipes curled round the corner of the ceiling and disappeared into the wall. Ducane had an impression of trestle tables and chairs and some old physical memory came to him from the war time, some recalling of dug-outs and guard rooms. He felt at once certain that the strange room had been something to do with the war, something secret and unrecorded and lost.

“Shall I light some candles, Sir? You could see a bit more then. And it would save the torch. I’m afraid it’s going to give out before long.”

McGrath moved to a corner and clanked open a metal box. A match was struck. The candle flame illumined McGrath’s hair and paper-white cheek and also the elaborate
silver candlestick which held the candle. Ducane exclaimed.

“Very pretty, isn’t it, Sir? Mr Radeechy had some nice stuff down here, I’ll show you. You can put the torch out now, Sir.”

Four candles in identical silver holders were now burning upon the trestle in the corner. Ducane moved to examine the candlesticks. Each one stood upon four silver balls held by four dragon claws, and the thick shaft was engraved all over with swirling dragons.

“Nice, aren’t they,” said McGrath. “Chinese, Mr Radeechy said they were. And take a look at this.”

He had brought out and was holding aloft a silver-gilt chalice studded with what appeared to be very large jewels. Ducane took the cup from him and examined it. The light was too dim and he knew too little about precious stones to be sure if these ones were real. But the effect was rich and somehow barbaric.

“Have a drink, Sir,” said McGrath.

As Ducane held the cup McGrath suddenly tilted some wine into it from a bottle which he had just produced. Ducane hastily put the chalice down on the table.

“It’s quite all right, Sir. It won’t have gone off. Quite a little feast we could have down here. We needn’t starve. See, there’s this funny bread, and walnuts, Mr R. was very partial to walnuts.”

McGrath was taking the contents out of the tins and spreading them upon the table. Ducane saw slices of moist black bread and the nuts, their veined shells slightly green with mould. Black bread for the black mass; and Ducane recalled that walnuts were held to be magical since their double interior resembled the lobes of the human brain.