The Face That Must Die (11 page)

He limped rapidly yet stealthily to the end of his wall. The man was sticking a notice to the wall of the passage. Horridge gripped the handle in his pocket. “What are you doing?” he said loudly.

The man whirled; his hand dragged the notice awry. The torch-beam poked at Horridge’s face, dazzling him. Then the man relaxed, or decided not to be intimidated. “You aren’t blind, are you?” he demanded and gestured at the notice with the light.

Above a caricature of a Negro family, the notice said SAY NO TO A BLACK BRITAIN! As Horridge squinted at him, the man’s face emerged from the dazzle: eyes swollen out of proportion by thick spectacles, a withdrawn chin. He’d seen this man sometimes, reading the newspapers in Cantril Farm Library.

The man must have observed his approval of the notice, for he said “Don’t you think we should get rid of all these foreigners?”

Horridge nodded curtly. It wasn’t the man’s place to interrogate him. But the man continued “Don’t you think we ought to do something about all these layabouts sponging on the welfare state?”

Horridge didn’t quite trust him. It was like brainwashing, this rapid stream of questions that demanded only agreement. They didn’t sound like the man’s own questions; Horridge suspected he’d learned them by rote. He couldn’t think for himself.

A cold breeze made the cuffs of Horridge’s pyjama trousers shiver. All this was getting him nowhere. Why couldn’t the fellow stand up and say what he knew was right, instead of skulking about under cover of darkness? Before the man could interrogate him further, Horridge demanded “And what about homosexuals?”

The man’s enormous eyes fluttered in their glass bowls, like startled fish. “I don’t like them,” he said.

Horridge pointed at the notice. “How is that sort of thing going to get rid of them?”

“
Have you got a better way?”

Horridge had trapped himself. Though the man’s triumphant stare enraged him, he couldn’t reply. The man said “Shall I take your name and address for some of our literature?”

“
No, thank you. I’m quite capable of thinking for myself.”

He stared until the man moved away. The torch-beam wavered on mud spiky with grass; it grew vague, and vanished. No, Horridge didn’t want their pamphlets drawing attention to him — not while he had to decide what to do about Craig.

He locked himself into his flat. He knew of the movement which printed the notices. He might have joined that movement, if he had believed in belonging to groups — although he didn’t care for the way they marched through areas where immigrants lived, to insult them: that was behaving like militant students. Militant! That meant to be like a soldier, but soldiers were on the side of law and order — not at all like students. Still, you couldn’t blame the movement for marching: they wouldn’t need to if people stayed in their own countries and behaved themselves instead of indulging in filthy practices in public lavatories.

There wouldn’t have been a Hitler if there had been fewer Jews in Germany. The movement ought to get itself into the government, as he had.

He lay in bed, imagining the man with his light and his notices groping through the concrete maze. What could he hope to achieve by such furtiveness? Yet Horridge felt a little guilty. At least the man was trying to do something positive.

* * *

Chapter VII

When he woke, Horridge knew what he ought to do.

As he washed, he stared at himself in the mirror. He simply didn’t look capable of carrying out such a plan. Sometimes when he looked in the mirror, he felt as though he couldn’t recognise himself. Except for his slightly protruding ears, he would pass himself by unrecognised in a crowd. He flapped deodorant away from his face, afraid of inhaling the chemical.

He must buy milk. The bottle in the bucket of cold water beneath the sink was empty. He walked towards the shops near the bus terminus. Everywhere were fences, head-height, ankle-height, as though nobody knew how to behave unless they were made to. Maybe the fences had been put up for vandals to scribble on with paint; the world was mad enough. Amid one tangle of graffiti he read KILLER.

Like his flat, the shopping street was L-shaped. Hardly a path in Cantril Farm ran visibly straight for more than a few yards; the walks sank into concrete valleys, or plunged straight through the hearts of tenements. The whole place reminded him of the mazes with which scientists tormented rats.

Above the shops three tiers of flats were stacked, a layer cake of concrete. Over the heavy metal mesh that protected the windows of the Trustee Savings Bank, iron bars were set — not so trusting, he thought wryly. A child was parked in the doorway of a betting shop, beside a sign LEADERS IN LEISURE. Puddles gathered litter in depressions in the concrete walk.

The walk was loud with shoppers. Let them babble if it did them any good. They’d rather chatter like monkeys than do anything constructive. But could he do more?

Yes, by God. He wouldn’t be dragged down by Cantril Farm. He’d proved that he could act so long as he didn’t hesitate. He felt dwindled by the tenements, but that wouldn’t sap him.

Dull music trickled through the supermarket. Let it mumble — it wouldn’t lull him. He bought a tin of corned beef to replace the one he’d used up for his Christmas dinner. You couldn’t trust many foods now, not with all this experimenting with chemicals, all these amino acids he’d heard they put in foods. God only knew what foreign foods contained.

He hurried towards his flat. KILLER. There it was again, in a different place. No doubt they thought it clever to write such things. Television had a lot to answer for. But at the same time the word seemed addressed to him, urging him to act.

He drowned the bottle of milk in the bucket, and went out. For once he didn’t fear losing his way; most of the walks led eventually to bus stops. Cantril Farm was constructed to herd people in the directions the planners wanted them to follow.

He waited opposite a post-box inscribed savagely as a totem pole. Above the tower blocks, the sky was featureless as whitewash. Nearby was a phone box — but he mustn’t use one so close to home; they might trace him. Craig and the police didn’t yet know where he lived; otherwise, why had they done nothing since trying to scare him outside Craig’s house?

The bus was stuffed with a Saturday crowd. Among shopping bags on their parents’ laps, children struggled like reluctant purchases. He had to stand; he refused to go upstairs into the stale smoke. Whenever the bus turned a corner, it threw his weight on his bad leg. Whenever the bus lurched, the low ceiling thumped his skull.

Please let the bus move faster, before he lost his nerve. But the driver was herding on more passengers, shouting “Move further down the bus.” The advancing crowd forced Horridge back. He had to sway when they did; he felt suffocated by bodies and the wails of children. Let the bus dawdle as long as it liked. By God, they wouldn’t weaken him.

The bus turned out of Lime Street and rushed down the curve to the shoppers’ stop. Those who had been seated joined the crowd in the aisle, hindering him. He was the tail end of the shuffling queue — just one of the crowd.

No, he was not, by God. He pushed his way out of the throng, ignoring the mutters of a knot of gossips. Beyond the boxed-in walkways that lowered over Williamson Square, two telephone boxes guarded each other’s backs. In the square, people bought fruit from a barrow, set balloons adrift to draw attention to the plight of someone or other, sang folk songs beside a hat scattered with coins. He headed for the unoccupied box.

But a woman was bearing down on it, driving a poodle before her like a tartan shopping basket. He mustn’t be made to wait, to falter! He ran lopsidedly, and grabbed the door. He met her glare, though his heart laboured irregularly, until she stalked off in search of another phone.

Suppose there were no directory? Mightn’t that mean that his purpose was mistaken? But the directory was on its shelf. He flicked the pages. No, their fluttering couldn’t infect him. Craig. Craig, R. There were several — but only one at the address in Aigburth Drive.

He drew himself up straight, and dialled. Police cameras were posted all over the city centre, spying. They had no reason to watch him, they wouldn’t even notice him among the crowds. They certainly wouldn’t be able to see what he was dialling. Could their vision be so sharp? He wished people wouldn’t keep passing so near him.

As soon as he’d finished dialling, Craig’s phone rang. Then — far too quickly, as if to take him off guard — the pay tone began.

Instinct convulsed his hand, which thrust in the coin. The shrill chattering was interrupted momentarily, then went on. Perhaps he’d been too hasty, and had wasted the coin. The tone stopped; the earpiece filled with silence. Was anyone there? Was somebody listening to him, stealthy as a hunter?

In a moment he heard the breathing. It was slow and heavy, but he knew it was only pretending to doze: no trapped beast could be more alert. Deep in it was a faint asthmatic wheeze. It seemed too wary to speak. Only after what felt like minutes, during which the breathing pressed close to Horridge’s ear, did the voice say “Yes?”

When speaking to the policemen, it had been deeper. Horridge bit his lip gleefully: Craig must be growing nervous. He oughtn’t to speak. Craig knew that somebody was listening to him; silence would be more disturbing.

He was rationalising his hesitation. He had found he couldn’t speak; disgust had gagged him. Craig’s breathing must have pressed as close to the young men as he had — Horridge stared out of the box, at people feeding pigeons from the benches in the square, at a little girl chasing an apple that had rolled from the barrow. He was desperate for reassurance.

The plastic clung to him; Craig breathed in his ear. “Craig speaking,” the voice said a little higher, a little less sure of itself.

Horridge’s lips twitched. His tongue forced them apart. He was preparing to say “Had any good boys lately?” when Craig put down the phone.

He grimaced at the dead receiver, then he hurried out into the crowd. The side streets leading from the square were crowded as conveyor belts. He wandered, gazing at lifeless clothes in windows, enjoying the memory of Craig’s unsureness. But he was growing frustrated. He hadn’t done enough.

He must phone again, and speak. He couldn’t do so here; Craig might have called his friends in the police, they might be searching for him. He sensed the presence of the cameras, perched somewhere overhead like hidden vultures. He needed to call from a place where he couldn’t be watched, and with which he had no connection.

He climbed to the walkway and strolled towards the outward bus stop. Beneath him the swarming crowd looked as small as their minds, their purposes. Buses roared and squealed under the walkway. On the side of one a long notice said 70 INTO ONE WILL GO, and showed a long queue boarding a bus. There were only a few people in the queue, duplicated over and over again. They wouldn’t make him into a duplicate.

At first the bus home wasn’t crowded, except with shopping that sat next to passengers. Horridge watched the driver in the mirror. The man’s lips moved as though he was talking to himself. He bared his teeth, licking them. Good God, was he mad? Perhaps he was simply trying to dislodge fragments of toffee.

As the bus bullied its way out of town, it grew full. Each time it slowed, it vibrated; the driver’s face quivered as though the mirror were a pool. Wasn’t that dangerous? People tramped upstairs, cigarettes panting in their mouths. The driver let a friend ride without paying. No wonder the company kept putting up fares!

The bus laboured up Brunswick Road, beside which a few lonely street corners defended their territory amid a waste of mud and billboards. The woman who had just boarded the bus stood in the aisle, scowling at the bag that dangled from her elbow and thumped her hipbone.

Horridge stood up. “Excuse me, would you like to sit down?”

She stared, as though he were mad. That was Women’s Lib for you. How many of these women knew that to lib meant to castrate? She sat down readily enough, for all that she appeared to resent his courtesy.

At once the driver said “No standing. Seats upstairs.”

Whom was he addressing? Horridge glanced at the woman, but she avoided his look. At last he stared at the driver’s reflected stare. “Of course there’s standing,” he said, and pointed at the sign.

“
No standing.” The man sounded indifferent as a machine. As soon as he’d driven past the traffic lights on top of the hill, he halted the bus. “I’ve told you, no standing. This bus doesn’t move until you go upstairs.”

Horridge felt everyone staring at him. He had been made a scapegoat, blamed for the delay. His skin felt as though they were sticking pins into him. As he clambered upstairs, his limp had never been heavier.

The triumphant jerk of the bus made him almost lose his footing. His foot dangled in mid-air. He remembered the ladder, the violent lurch, his father dragging him down, his leg thumping the ground like a hammer composed of flesh and fragile bone. That moment had made sure he would never reach the top.

And now he was trudging upstairs at the whim of this petty employee who thought his uniform made him all-powerful. He wouldn’t do it. He descended the stairs loudly and declared “I’m not sitting in all that smoke.”

Some of the passengers groaned, as though he were a villain making a stage entrance. “Then you can get off my bus,” the driver said.