A Demon in my View by Ruth Rendell

For Margaret Rabbs, with love

From childhood's hour I have not been As others were; I have not seen As others saw; I could not being My passions from a common spring. From the same source I have not taken My sorrow; I could not awaken My heart to joy at the same tone; And all I loved, I loved alone. Then--in my childhood, in the dawn Of a most stormy life--was drawn From every depth of good and ill The mystery which binds me still... And the cloud that took the form (When the rest of Heaven was blue) Of a demon in my view.

--Edgar Allan Poe

1

The cellar was divided into rooms. Each of these caverns except the last of them was cluttered with the rubbish which usually encumbers the cellars of old houses: broken bicycles, old mould-grown leather cases, wooden crates, legless or armless chairs, cracked china vessels, yellowing newspapers bundled up with string, and in heaps, the nameless unidentifiable cylinders and tubes and rods and rings and spirals of metal which once, long ago, bolted or screwed or linked something on to something else. All this rubbish was coated with the thick black grime that is always present in cellars. The place smelt of soot and fungus. Between the junk heaps a passage had been cleared from the steps to the first doorless doorway, on to the second doorway and thence to the bare room beyond. And in this room, unseen as yet in the pitch blackness, the figure of a woman leaned against the wall. He came down the steps with a torch in his hand. He switched on the torch only when he had closed and bolted the door behind him. Then, led by its beam, he picked his way softly along the path that was hedged by rubbish. There was no sound but the shuffle of his slippers on the sooty stone, yet as he entered the second room he told himself he had heard ahead of him an indrawn breath, a small gasp of fear. He smiled, though he was trembling, and the hand which held the torch shook a little. At the second doorway he raised the beam and let it play from the lower left-hand corner of the room upwards and then downwards, moving it languidly towards the right. It showed him pocked walls, a cracked ceiling hung with cobwebs. It showed him old broken long-disused electric wires, a trickle of viscous water running from the fissure in a split brick, and then playing in a downward arc, it showed him the woman's figure. Her white face, beautiful, unmarked by any flaw of skin or feature, stared blankly back at him. But he fancied, as the torch shivered in his hand, that she had cringed, her slim body in its short black dress pressing further into the wall which supported it. A handbag was hooked over one of her arms and she wore scuffed black shoes. He didn't speak. He had never known how to talk to women. There was only one thing he had ever been able to do to women and, advancing now, smiling, he did it. First he rested the torch on a brick ledge at the level of his knees so that she was in shadow, so that the room took on the aspect of an alley into which a street lamp filters dimly. Then he approached her, paralysed as she was, and meeting no resistance-he would have preferred resistance-he closed his hands on her throat. Still there was no resistance, but what happened next was almost as satisfactory. His hands squeezed till the fingers met, and-as forefinger pressed against thumb, the beautiful white face changed, crumpled, twisted in agony and caved in. He gave a grunting gasp as her body fell sideways. He released his hold, swaying at the earthquake inside him, and he let her fall, prone and stiff into the footmarked soot. It took him a few minutes to recover. He wiped his hands and the corners of his mouth on a clean white handkerchief He closed his eyes, opened them, sighed. Then he picked up the plastic shop window model and set her once more against the wall. Her face remained caved-in. He wiped the dust from it with his handkerchief and, inserting his fingers through the split in her neck, a split which grew wider each time he murdered her, pushed out sunken nose and crumpled eyes and depressed chin, until she was blank and beautiful again. He straightened her dress and replaced the handbag, which had come unhooked, once more on her arm. She was ready to die for him again. A week, a fortnight, might go by but she would wait for him. It was good, the best thing in his life, just knowing she was there, waiting till next time... The houses were warrens for people, little anthills of discomfort. Almost each one, built to accommodate a single family, had been segmented into four or five separate units. Ungracious living was evinced by a row of doorbells, seven in an eight-roomed house, by the dustbins that had replaced rose bushes in the front gardens, by the slow decay that showed in a boarded window, a balcony rail patched with chicken wire, a latchless gate that tapped ceaselessly, monotonously, against its post. On the odd-numbered side of Trinity Road the houses were tall and with high basements so that the flights of steps mounting to their front doors seemed to assault the very heart of these houses like engines of siege. They faced terraces of brown brick, humbler-looking and only three floors high. Outside number 142 was parked a large shiny car, a green Jaguar. A toy dog that nodded its head at the slightest vibration rested inside the rear window, and hanging from the centre of the windscreen was a blonde doll in a two-piece bathing suit. The car looked incongruous in Trinity Road, along which such vehicles generally passed without stopping. Just inside the low wall that bounded the front garden of number 142 grew two lopped-off lime trees, stumps bearing on their summits excrescences of leathery leaves that gave them the look of prehistoric vegetation. Behind them was a small patch of brown turf. On the ground floor was a bay window, curtained in orange; above that two windows curtained in floral green-frayed curtains these, with a rent in one of them; on the top floor brown velvet curtains which, parted, disclosed a white frilly drapery like the bodice of a woman's nightgown. A low flight of steps, of pirate granite but glazed instead of polished, led to a front door whose woodwork might have been of any colour, green, brown, grey, it was so long since it had been painted. But the glass panels in it kept the dim glow they had always had, rubber plant green and the dull maroon of sour wine, the kind of stained glass found in chapel windows of the last century. There were five bells, each one but the lowest labelled. A psychologist would have learned much from the varied and distinctive labelling of these bells. The topmost bore below it a typewritten slip, framed in a plastic container clearly designed for this purpose, which stated: Flat A, Mr. A. Johnson. Beneath this and the next bell, on a scrap of card secured with adhesive tape, was scrawled in a bold reckless hand: Jonathan Dean. While under the third bell two labels seemed to quarrel with each other for pre-eminence. One was of brown plastic with the letters on it in relief: Flat C, B. Kotowsky. Its rival, jostling it, stuck to the corner of it with a gob of glue, announced in felt-tipped pen: Ms. V. Kotowsky. Last came a frivolous oval of orange cardboard on which, under a pair of Chinese characters done with a brush, the caller might read: Room 1, Li-li Chan. The space beneath the lowest bell was vacant, as was Room 2 with which it communicated. Between the door of the vacant room and the long diagonal sweep which was the underside of the staircase, a shabby windowless space, Stanley Caspian, the landlord, had his office. It was furnished with a desk and two bentwood chairs. On top of the shelves, bristling with papers; which lined the rear wall, stood an electric kettle and a couple of cups and saucers. There was no other furniture in the hall but a rectangular mahogany table set against the bannisters and facing the ground floor bathroom. Stanley Caspian sat at the desk, as he always did when he came to a hundred and forty-two for his Saturday morning conference with Arthur Johnson. Arthur sat in the other chair. On the desk were spread the rent books and cheques of the tenants. Each rent book had its own brown envelope with the tenant's name printed on it. This had been an innovation of Arthur's and he had done the printing. Stanley wrote laboriously in the rent books, pressing his pen in hard and making unnecessary full-stops after every word and figure. "I'll be glad to see the back of that Dean," he said when he had inked in the last fifty pence and made the last full-stop. "Middle of next month and he'll be gone." "And his gramophone," said Arthur, "and his wine bottles filling up our little dustbin. I'm sure we'll all be devoutly thankful." "Not Kotowsky. He won't have anyone to go boozing with. Still, thank God he's going off his own bat, is what I say. I'd never have been able to get rid of him, not with this paxy new Rent Act. Put the kettle on, me old Arthur. I fancy a spot of elevenses." And tenses and twelveses, Arthur thought. He plugged in the electric kettle and set out the cups. He wouldn't have dreamed of eating anything at this hour, but Stanley, who was enormously fat, whose belly almost burst open the front of his size seventeen collar shirt, opened one of the packages he had brought with him and began devouring sandwiches of bread rolls and processed cheese. Stanley spluttered crumbs all over his shirt, eating uninhibitedly like some gross superannuated baby. Arthur watched him inscrutably. He neither liked nor disliked Stanley. For him, as for everyone, he had no particular feeling most of the time. He wished only to be esteemed, to keep in with the right people, to know where he stood. Inclining his head towards the door behind him, he said: "A little bird told me you'd let that room." "Right," said Stanley, his mouth full. "A little Chinese bird, was it?" "I must confess I was a bit put out you told Miss Chan before telling me. You know me, I always believe in speaking out. And I was a little hurt. After all, I am your oldest tenant. I have been here twenty years, and I think I can say I've never caused you a moment's unease." "Right. I only wish they were all like you." Arthur filled the cups with instant coffee, boiling water and a dribble of cold milk. "No doubt, you had your reasons." He lifted cold eyes, of so pale a blue as to be almost white. "I mustn't be so sensitive." "The fact is," said Stanley, shovelling spoonfuls of sugar into his cup, "that I wondered how you'd take it. You see, this new chap, the one that's taking Room 2, he's got the same name as you." He gave Arthur a sidelong look and then he chortled. "You have to laugh. Coincidence, eh? I wondered how you'd take it." "You mean he's also called Arthur Johnson?" "Not so bad as that. Dear, oh, dear, you have to laugh. He's called Anthony Johnson. You'll have to take care your post doesn't get mixed up. Don't want him reading your love letters, eh?" Arthur's eyes seemed to grow even paler, and the muscles of his face tightened, tensed, drawing it into a mask. When he spoke his accent smoothed into an exquisite, slightly affected, English. "I've nothing to hide. My life is an open book." "Maybe his isn't. If I wasn't in a responsible position I'd say you could have a bit of fun there, me old Arthur." Stanley finished his sandwiches and fetched a doughnut from the second bag. "The Sexual Behaviour of the Human Male, that's the sort of open book his life'll be. Good-looking young devil, he is. Real flypaper for the girls, I shouldn't wonder." Arthur couldn't bear that sort of talk. It made him feel sick. "I only hope he's got a good bank reference and a decent job." "Right. He's paid two months' rent in advance and that's better than all your pony bank references to me. He's moving in Monday." Stanley got heavily to his feet. Crumbs cascaded on to desk, envelopes and rent books. "We'll just have a look in, Arthur. Mrs. Caspian says there's a fruit bowl in there she wants and young Anthony'll only smash it." Arthur nodded sagely: If he and his landlord were in agreement about anything, it was the generally destructive behaviour of the other tenants. Besides, he enjoyed penetrating the rooms, usually closed to him. And in this one he had special interest. It was small and furnished with junk. Arthur accepted this as proper in a furnished room, noting only that it was far from clean. He picked his way over to the window. Stanley, having secured his fruit bowl, of red and white Venetian glass, from heterogeneous stacks of crockery and cutlery on the draining board, was admiring the only object in the place less than twenty years old. "That's a bloody good washbasin, that is," he remarked, tapping this article of primrose-coloured porcelain. "Cost me all of fifteen quid to have that put in. Your people did it, as I remember." "It was a reject," said Arthur absently. "There's a flaw in the soap dish." He was staring out of the window which overlooked a narrow brick-walled court. Above an angle of wall you could see the topmost branches of a tree. The court was concreted and the concrete was green with lichen, for into the two drains on either side of it flowed-and sometimes overflowed-the waste water from the two upstairs flats and Jonathan Dean's room. In the wall which faced the window was a door. "What are you looking at?" said Stanley none too pleasantly, for Arthur's remark about the washbasin had perhaps rankled. "Nothing," said Arthur. "I was just thinking he won't have much of an outlook." "What d'you expect for seven quid a week? You want to remember you pay seven for a whole flat because the Foxy government won't let me charge more for unfurnished accommodation. You're lucky, getting your hooks on that when I didn't know any better. Oh, yes. But times have deranged, thank God, and for seven quid a week now you look out on a cellar door and lump it. Right?" "It's no concern of mine," said Arthur. "I imagine my namesake will be out a lot, won't he?" "If he's got any sense," said Stanley, for at that moment there crashed through the ceiling the triumphant chords of the third movement from Beethoven's Eighth. "Tschaikowsky," he said learnedly. "Dean's at it again. I like something a bit more modern myself." "I was never musical." Arthur gravitated into the hall. "I must get on with things. Shopping day, you know. If I might just have my little envelope?"

2

His shopping basket in one hand and an orange plastic carrier containing his laundry in the other, Arthur made his way along Trinity Road towards the launderette in Brasenose Avenue. He could have used the Coinerama in Magdalen Hill, but he went to Magdalen Hill every weekday to work and at the weekends he liked to vary his itinerary. After all, for good reason, he didn't go out much and never after dark. So instead of cutting through Oriel Mews, past the Waterlily pub and making for the crossroads, he went down past All Souls' Church, where as a child he had passed two hours each Sabbath Day, his text carefully committed to memory. And at four o'clock Auntie Gracie had always been waiting for him, always, it seemed to him, under an umbrella. Had it invariably rained on Sundays, the granite terrace opposite veiled in misty grey? That terrace was now gone, replaced by barrack-like blocks of council flats. He followed the route he and Auntie Gracie had taken towards home, but only for a little way. Taking some pleasure in making the K. bus stop for him alone, Arthur went over the pedestrian crossing in Balliol Street, holding up his hand in an admonitory way. Down St. John's Road where the old houses still remained, turn-of-the-century houses some enterprising but misguided builder had designed with Dutch facades, and where plane trees alternated with concrete lamp standards. The launderette attendant said good morning and Arthur rejoined with a cool nod. He used his own soap in the machine. He didn't trust the blue stuff in the little packet you got for five pence. Nor did he trust the attendant to put his linen in the drier nor the other customers not to steal it. So he sat patiently on one of the benches, talking to no one, until the thirty-five minute cycle was completed. It afforded him considerable satisfaction to note how superior were his pale blue sheets, snowy towels, underwear and shirts, to the gaudy jumble sale laundry in the adjacent machines. While they were safely rotating in the drier, he went next-door to the butchers and then to the greengrocers. Arthur never shopped in the supermarkets run by Indians, in which this area of Kenbourne Vale abounded. He selected his lamb chops, his small Sunday joint of Scotch topside, with care. Three slices off the roast for Sunday, the rest to be minced and made into Monday's cottage pie. A pound of runner beans, and pick out the small ones, if you please, he didn't want a mouthful of strings. A different way back. The linen so precisely folded that it wouldn't really need ironing-though Arthur always ironed it-he trotted up Merton Street. More council flats, tower blocks here like pillars supporting the heavy overcast sky. The lawns which separated them, Arthur had often noticed with satisfaction, were prohibited to children. The children played in the street or sat disconsolately on top of bits of sculpture. Arthur disapproved of the sculptures, which in his view resembled chunks cut out of prehistoric monsters for all they were entitled Spring or Social Conscience or Man and Woman, but he didn't think the children ought to sit on them or play in the street for that matter. Auntie Gracie had never allowed him to play in the street. Stanley Caspian's Jaguar had gone, and so had the Kotowskys' fourth-hand Ford. A fistful of vouchers, entitling their possessor to three pence off toothpaste or free soap when you bought a giant size shampoo, had been pushed through the letter box. Arthur helped himself to those which might come in handy, and mounted the stairs. There was a half-landing after the ten steps of the first flight where a pay phone box was attached to the wall. Four steps went on to the first floor. The door of the Kotowskys' flat was on his left, that to Jonathan Dean's room facing him, and the door to the bathroom they shared between the other two. Dean's door was open, Shostakovitch's Fifth Symphony on loud enough to be heard in Kenbourne Town Hall. The intention apparently was that it should be loud enough merely to be audible in the bathroom from which Dean, a tall red-haired, red-faced man, now emerged. He wore nodding but a small mauve towel fastened round him loincloth-fashion. "The body is more than raiment," he remarked when he saw Arthur. Arthur flushed slightly. It was his belief that Dean was mad, a conviction which rested partly on the fact that everything the man said sounded as if it had come out of a book. He turned his head in the direction of the open door. "Would you be good enough to reduce the volume a little, Mr. Dean?" Dean said something about music having charms to soothe the savage breast, and beat his own which was hairy and covered with freckles. But, having slammed his door with violence but no animosity, he subdued Shostakovitch and only vague Slavic murmurs reached Arthur as he ascended the second flight. And now he was in his own exclusive domain. He occupied the whole second floor. With a sigh of contentment, resting his laundry bag and his shopping basket on the mat, he unlocked the door and let himself in. Arthur prepared his lunch, two lamb cutlets, creamed potatoes, runner beans. None of your frozen or canned rubbish for him. Auntie Gracie had brought him up to appreciate fresh food, well-cooked. He ended the meal with a slice from the plum pie he had baked on Thursday night, and then, without delay, he washed the dishes. One of Auntie Gracie's maxims had been that only slatternly housekeepers leave dirty dishes in the sink. Arthur always washed his the moment he finished eating. He went into the bedroom. The bed was stripped. He put on clean sheets, rose pink, and rose pink pillow cases. Arthur couldn't sleep in a soiled bed. Once, when collecting their rent, he had caught a glimpse of the Kotowskys' bed and it had put him off his supper. Meticulously he dusted the bedroom furniture and polished the silver stoppers on Auntie Gracie's cut-glass scent bottles. All his furniture was late-Victorian, pretty though a little heavy. It came up well under an application of polish. Arthur still felt guilty about using spray-on polish instead of the oldfashioned wax kind. Auntie Gracie had never approved of shortcuts. He gave the frilly nets, with which every window in the flat was curtained, a critical stare. They were too fragile to be risked at the launderette, so he washed them himself once a month, and they weren't due for a wash for another week. But this was such a grimy district, and there was nothing like white net for collecting every bit of flying dust. He began to take them down. For the second time that day he found himself facing the cellar door. The Kotowskys had no window which overlooked it. It could be seen only from this one of his and from the one in Room z. This had long been known to Arthur, he had known it for nearly as long as the duration of his tenancy. Very little in his own life had changed in those twenty years. The cellar door had never been painted, though the bricks had darkened perhaps and the concrete grown more green and damp. No one had ever seen him cross that yard, he thought as he laid the net curtains carefully over a chair, no one had ever seen him enter the cellar. He continued to stare down, considering, remembering. He had been at school with Stanley Caspian-Merton Street Junior-and Stanley had been fat and gross and coarse even then. A bully always. "Auntie's baby! Auntie's baby! Where's your dad, Arthur Johnson?" And with an inventiveness no one would have suspected from the standard of Stanley's school work: "Cowardy, cowardy custard, Johnson is a bastard!" The years civilise, at least inhibit. When they met by chance in Trinity Road, each aged thirty-two, Stanley was affable, even considerate. "Sorry to hear you lost your aunt, Arthur. More like a mother to you, she was." "Yes." "You'll be wanting a place of your own now. Bachelor flat, eh? How about taking the top of a hundred and forty-two?" "I've no objection to giving it the once over," said Arthur primly. He knew old Mrs. Caspian had left her son a lot of property in West Kenbourne. The house was in a mess in those days and the top flat was horrible. But Arthur saw its potential-and for two pounds ten a week? So he took Stanley's offer, and a couple of days later when he had started the re-decorating he went down into the cellar to see if, by chance, it housed a stepladder. She was lying on the floor of the furthest room on a heap of sacks and black-out curtains left over from the war. She was naked and her white plastic flesh was cold and shiny. He never found out who had brought her there and left her entombed. At first he had been embarrassed, taken aback as he was when he glimpsed likenesses of her standing in shop windows and waiting to be dressed. But then, because he was alone with her and there was no one to see them, he approached more calmly. So that was how they looked? With awe, with fear, at last with distaste, he looked at the two hemispheres on her chest, the soft swollen triangle between her closed thighs. An impulse came to him to dress her. He had done so many secret things in his life-almost everything he had done that he had wanted to do had been covert, clandestine-that no inhibition intervened to stop him fetching from the flat a black dress, a handbag, shoes. These had belonged to Auntie Gracie and he had brought them with him from the house in Magdalen Hill. People had suggested he give them to the W. V. S. for distribution, but how could he? How could he have borne to see some West Kenbourne slattern queering it in her clothes? His white lady had attenuated limbs and was as tall as he. Auntie Gracie's dress came above her knees. She had yellow nylon hair that curled over her cheekbones. He put the shoes on her feet and hooked the handbag over her arm. In order to see what he was doing, he had put a hundred-watt bulb in the light socket. But another of those impulses led him to take it out. By the light of the torch she looked real, the cellar room with its raw brick walls an alley in the hinterland of city streets. It was sacrilege to dress her in Auntie Gracie's clothes, and yet that very sacrilege had an indefinable rightness about it, was a spur... He had strangled her before he knew what he was doing. With his bare hands on her cold smooth throat. The release had been almost as good as the real thing. He set her up against the wall once more, dusted her beautiful white face. You do not have to hide or fear or sweat for such a killing; the law permits you to kill anything not made of flesh and blood... He left her and came out into the yard. The room that was now Room z had been untenanted then as had the whole house but for his flat. And when a tenant had come he had been, as had his successor, on night work that took him out five evenings a week at six. But before that Arthur had decided. She should save him, she should be-as those who would like to get hold of him would call it-his therapy. The woman who waited in the dark streets, asking for trouble, he cared nothing for them, their pain, their terror. He cared, though, for his own fate. To defy it, he would kill a thousand women in her person, she should be his salvation. And then no threat could disturb him, provided he was careful never to go out after dark, never to have a drink. After a time he had come to be rather proud of his solution. It seemed to set down as nonsense the theories of those experts-he had, in the days of his distress, studied their works-that men with his problem had no self-control, no discipline over their own compulsions. He had always known they talked rubbish. Why shouldn't he have the recourse of the members of Alcoholics Anonymous, of the rehabilitated drug addict? But now? Anthony Johnson. Arthur, who made it his business to know the routines and life-styles of his fellow tenants, hoped he would soon acquire a thorough-going knowledge of the new man's movements. Anthony Johnson would surely go out two or three evenings a week? He must. The alternative was something Arthur didn't at all want to face. There was nothing for it but to wait and see. The possibility of bringing the white lady up into the flat, installing her here, killing her here, occurred to him only for him to dismiss the idea. He disliked the notion of his encounters with her taking on the air of a game. It was the squalor of the cellar, the dimness, his stealthy approach that gave to it its reality. No, she must remain there, he thought, and he must wait and see. He turned from the window and at the same time turned his mind, for he didn't much care to dwell upon her and what she truly was, preferring her to stand down there forgotten and unacknowledged until he needed her again. This, in fact, he thought as he took away the curtains to put them in soak, was the first time he had thought of her in those terms for many years. Dismissing her as a man dismisses a compliant and always available mistress, Arthur went into the living room. The sofa and the two armchairs had been re-upholstered since Auntie Gracie's death, only six months after, but Arthur had taken such good care of them that the covers still looked new. Carefully he worked on the blue moquette with a stiff brush. The cream drawn-thread antimacassars might as well go into the water with the nets. He polished the oval mahogany table, the mahogany tallboy, the legs and arms of the dining chairs; plumped up the blue and brown satin cushions, flicked his feather duster over the two hand-painted parchment lampshades, the knobs on the television set, the Chelsea china in the cabinet. Now for the vacuum cleaner. Having the flat entirely covered with wall-to-wall carpet in a deep fawn shade had made a hole in his savings, but it had been worth it. He ran the cleaner slowly and thoroughly over every inch of the carpet, taking his time so that its droning zoom-zoom wouldn't be lost on Jonathan Dean, though he had little hope of its setting him an example. Finally, he rinsed the nets and the chair backs and hung them over the drying rack in the bathroom. There was no need to clean the bathroom or the kitchen. They were cleaned every morning as a matter of course, the former when he had dried himself after his bath, the latter as soon as breakfast was over. At this point he sat down in the chair by the front window and, having left all his doors open, surveyed the flat along its spotless length. It smelt of polish, silver cleaner, soap and elbow grease. Arthur recalled how, when he was about eleven and had neglected to wash his bedroom window as thoroughly as Auntie Gracie demanded, she had sent him round to Winter's with threepence. "You ask the man for a pound of elbow grease, Arthur. Go on. It won't take you five minutes." The man in the shop had laughed himself almost into a fit. But he hadn't explained why he had no elbow grease, and Arthur had to take the threepenny bit-a threepenny joey, they called them then-back home again. "I expect he did laugh," said Auntie Gracie. "And I hope you've been taught a lesson." She rubbed Arthur's arm through the grey flannel shirt. "This is where your elbow grease comes from. You can't buy it, you have to make it yourself." Arthur hadn't borne her any malice. He knew she had acted for the best. He would do exactly the same by any child in his charge. Children had to be taught the hard way, and it had set him on the right path. Would she be pleased with him if she could see him now? If she could see how well he kept his own place, his bank balance, how he ordered his life, how he hadn't missed a day at Grainger's in twenty years? Perhaps. But she had never been very pleased with him, had she? He had never reached those heights of perfection she had laid before him as fitting for one who needed to cleanse himself of the taint of his birth and background. Arthur sighed. He should have washed the Chelsea china. It was no good telling himself a flick with that duster would serve as well as a wash. Tired now but determined to soldier on, he put the shepherdesses and frock-coated gentlemen and dogs and little flower baskets on to a tray and carried them into the kitchen.

3

Arthur was a sound sleeper. He fell asleep within five minutes of laying his head on the pillow and hardly ever awoke before the alarm went off at seven-thirty. This ability to sleep was something to confound those silent critics, that invisible army of psychiatrists whose words he had read but never yet heard, and who would, he suspected, categorise him disagreeably. Which was absurd. Neurotic people don't sleep well, nor do hysterics. Arthur knew he was a perfectly normal man who happened (like all normal men) to have a small peculiarity he was well able to keep under control. He was always the last to leave for work and the first to get home. This was because the others all worked further afield than he. Jonathan Dean went first. He left at five past eight while Arthur was still in his bath. This Monday morning his room door was slammed so loudly that the bath water actually rocked about like tea in a joggled cup. The front door also crashed shut. Arthur dried himself and, for decency's sake, put on his towelling-robe before washing down bath, basin and floor. As soon as he was dressed, he opened his own front door and left it on the latch. The Kotowskys burst out of their flat while he was pouring out his cornflakes. As usual, they were quarrelling. "All right, I get the message," he heard Brian Kotowsky say. "You've told me three times you won't be in tonight." "I just don't want you ringing up all my friends, asking where I am." "You can settle that one, Vesta, by telling me where you'll be." They clumped down the stairs, still arguing, but Arthur couldn't catch Vesta Kotowsky's reply. The front door closed fairly quietly which meant Vesta must have shut it. Arthur went to his living room window and watched them get into their car which was left day in and day out, rain, shine or snow, parked in the street. He was sincerely glad he had never taken the step of getting married, had, in fact, taken such a serious step to avoid it. As he was returning to his kitchen he heard Li-li Chan come upstairs to the half-landing and the phone. Li-li spoke quite good English but rather as a talking bird might have spoken it. Her voice was high and clipped. She was always giggling, mostly about nothing. She giggled now, into the receiver. "You pick me up soon? Quarter to nine? Oh, you are nice, nice man. Do I love you? I don't know. Yes, yes, I love you. I love lots, lots of people. Good-bye now." Li-li giggled prettily all the way back down the stairs. Arthur snorted, but not loudly enough for her to hear. London Transport wouldn't get rich out of her. Don't suppose she ever spends a penny on a train or bus fare, Arthur Thought, and darkly, I wonder what she has to do to make it worth their while? But he didn't care to pursue that one, it was too distasteful. He heard her go out on the dot of a quarter to. She always closed the doors very softly as if she had somedhing to hide. A well set-up, clean-looking young Englishman had come for her in a red sports car. A wicked shame, Arthur thought, but boys like that had only themselves to blame, they didn't know the meaning of self-discipline. Alone in the house now, he finished his breakfast, washed the dishes and wiped down all the surfaces. The post was due at nine. While he was brushing the jacket of his second-best suit and selecting a tie, he heard the dull thump of the letter box. Arthur always took the post in and arranged the letters on the hall table. But first there was his rubbish to deal with. He lifted the liner from the wastebin, secured the top of it with a wire fastener and went downstairs, first making sure, with a quick glance into the mirror, that his tie was neatly knotted and that there was a clean white handkerchief in his breast pocket. Whether there was anyone in the house or not, Arthur would never have gone downstairs improperly dressed. Nor would he set foot outside the house without locking the doors behind him, not even to go to the dustbin. Once more, the bin was choked with yellowish decaying bean sprouts, not even wrapped up. That wasteful Li-li again! He would have to make it clear to Stanley Caspian that one dustbin was inadequate for five people-six when this new man came today. Unlocking the door and reentering the house, he picked up the post. The usual weekly letter, postmarked Taiwan, from Li-li's father who hadn't adopted Western ways and wrote the sender's name as Chan Ah Feng. Poor trusting man, thought Arthur, little did he know. Yet another bill for Jonathan Dean. The next thing they'd have debt collectors round, and a fine thing that would be for the house's reputation. Two letters for the Kotowskys, one for her and one for both of them. That was the way it always was. He tidied up the circulars and vouchers-who messed them about like that out of sheer wantonness he didn't know-and then he arranged the letters, their envelope edges aligned to each other and the edge of the table. Ten past nine. Sighing a little, because it was so pleasant having the house to himself, Arthur went back upstairs and collected his briefcase. He had no real need of a briefcase for he never brought work home, but Auntie Gracie had given him his first one for his twenty-first birthday and since then he had replaced it three times. Besides, it looked well. Auntie Gracie had always said that a man going to business without a briefcase is as ill-dressed as a lady without gloves. He closed his door and tested it with his hand to make sure it was fast shut. Down the stairs once more and out into Trinity Road. A fine bright day, though somewhat autumnal. What else could you expect in late September? Grainger's, Contractors and Builders' Merchants, weren't due to open until nine-thirty and Arthur was early. He lingered to look at the house where he had lived with Auntie Gracie. It was on the corner of Balliol Street and Magdalen Hill, at the point where the hill became Kenbourne Lane, a tall narrow house, condemned to demolition but still waiting along with its neighbours to be demolished. The front door and the downstairs bay were sealed up with gleaming silvery corrugated iron to stop squatters and other vagrants getting in. Arthur often wondered what Auntie Gracie would say if she could see it now, but he approved of the sealing up. He paused at the gate and looked up to the boarded rectangle on the brick facade which had once been his bedroom window. Auntie Gracie had been very good to him. He could never make up to her for what she had done for him if he struggled till the day of his death. He knew well what she had done, for, apart from the concrete evidence of it all around him, she had never missed an opportunity of telling him. "After all I've done for you, Arthur!" She had bought him from his mother, her own sister, when he was two months old. "Had to give her a hundred pounds, Arthur, and a hundred was a lot of money in those days. We never saw her again. She was off like greased lightning." How fond Auntie Gracie had been of grease-elbow grease, greased lightning-"You need a bit of grease under your hems, Arthur." She had told him the facts of his birth as soon as she thought him old enough to understand. Unfortunately, Stanley Caspian and others of his ilk had thought him old enough some months before, but that was no fault of hers. And she had never mentioned his mother or his father, whoever he may have been, at all. But in that bedroom-with the door open, of course. She insisted on his always leaving the door open-he had spent many childhood hours, wondering. How foolish children were and how ungrateful... Arthur shook himself and gave a slight cough. People would be looking at him in a moment. He deplored anything that might attract attention to oneself. And why on earth had he been mooning away like this when he passed the house every day, when there had been no unusual circumstance to give rise to such a reverie? But, of course, there was an unusual circumstance. The new man was coming to Room 2. It was only natural that today he should dwell a little on his past life. Natural, but governable too. He turned briskly away from the gate as All Souls' clock struck the half-hour. Grainger's yard was next door but one to the sealed-up house, next to that a half-acre or so of waste ground where houses had been demolished but not yet replaced; beyond that Kenbourne Lane tube station. Arthur unlocked the double gates and let himself into the glass and cedarwood hut which was his office. The boy who made tea and swept up and ran errands and whose duty it was to open the place, hadn't yet arrived. Typical. He wouldn't be late like this morning after morning if he had had an Auntie Gracie to put a spot of grease under his heels. Raising the Venetian blinds to let sunshine into the small neat room, Arthur took the cover off his Adler standard. Plenty of post had come since Friday, mostly returned bills with cheques enclosed. There was one irate letter from a customer who said that a pastel blue sink unit had been installed by Grainger's in his kitchen instead of the stainless steel variety he had ordered. Arthur read it carefully, planning what diplomatic words he would write in reply. He called himself, when required to state his occupation, a surveyor. In fact, he had never surveyed anything and wouldn't have known how to go about it. His work consisted simply in sitting at this desk from nine-thirty till five, answering the phone, sending out bills and keeping the books. He knew his work back to front, inside out, but it still caused him anxiety, for Auntie Gracie's standards were always before him. "Never put off till tomorrow what you can do today, Arthur. Remember if a job's worth doing, it's worth doing well. Your employer has reposed his trust in you. He has put you in a responsible position and it's up to you not to let him down." Those, or words like them, had been the words with which she had sent him off to be Grainger's boy a week after his fourteenth birthday. So he had swept up better than anyone else and made tea better than anyone else. When he was twenty-one he had attained his present responsibility, that of seeing to it that every customer of Grainger's got his roof mended better than anyone else's roof and his kitchen floor laid better than anyone else's kitchen floor. And he had seen to it. He was invaluable. Dear Sir, Arthur typed, I note with regret that the Rosebud de Lure sink unit (type E/4283, pastel blue) was not, in fact Barry Hopkins slouched into the office, chewing bubble gum. "Hi." "Good morning, Barry. A little late, aren't you? Do you know what time it is?" "Round half nine," said Barry. "I see. Round half nine. Of all the lackadaisical, feckless..." Arthur would have liked to advise him to go over to the works and ask for a pound of elbow grease, but the young were so sophisticated these days. Instead he snapped, "Take that filthy stuff out of your mouth." Barry took no notice. He blew an enormous bubble, like a balloon and of a pale shade of aquamarine. Leaning idly on the window sill, he said: "Old Grainger's comin' across the yard." Arthur was galvanised. He composed his face into an expression suggestive of a mixture of devotion to duty, selfesteem and simpering sycophancy, and applied his hands to the typewriter.

4

Anthony Johnson had no furniture. He possessed nothing but a few clothes and a lot of books. These he had brought with him to Liz Trinity Road in a large old suitcase and a canvas bag. There were works on sociology, psychology, his dictionary of psychology, and that essential textbook for any student of the subject, The Psychopath by William and Joan McCord. Whatever else he needed for reference he would obtain from the British Museum, and from that excellent library of criminology-the best, it was said, in London-housed in Radclyffe College, Kenbourne Vale. In that library too he would write the thesis whose subject was Some Aspects of the Psychopathic Personality, and which he hoped would secure him from the University of London his doctorate of philosophy. Part of it, he thought, surveying Room 2, would have to be written here. In that fireside chair; presumably, which seemed to be patched with bits from a woman's tweed skirt. On that crippled gate-leg table. Under that hanging lamp that looked lilke a monstrous, joke shop, plastic jellyfish. Well, he wanted his Ph.D and this was the price he must pay for it. Dr. Johnson. Not, of course, that he would call himself doctor. It was Helen who had pointed out that in this country, the land of such anomalies, the bachelor of medicine is called doctor and the doctor of philosophy mister. She too had seen the funny side of being Dr. Johnson and had quoted epigrams and talked about Boswell until he, at last, had seen the point. But it was always so. Sometimes he thought that for all his Cambridge First, his Home Office Social Science diploma, his wide experience of working with the poor, the sick and the deprived, he had never woken up to awareness and insight until he met Helen. She it Was who had turned his soul's eye towards the light. But as he thought this, he turned his physical eye towards Stanley Caspian's green-spotted fingermarked mirror and surveyed his own reflection. He wasn't a vain man. He hardly ever thought about the way he looked. That he was tall and slim and strongly-made with straight features and thick fair hair had never meant much to him except in that they denoted health. But lately he had come to wonder. He wondered what he lacked that Roger had; he who was good-looking and vigorous and-well, good company, wasn't he?-hypereducated with a good salary potential, and Roger who was stupid and dull and possessive and couldn't do anything but win pistol shooting contests. Only he knew it wasn't that at all. It was just that Helen, for all her awareness, didn't know her own mind. To give her a chance to know it, to choose between them, he had come here. The library, of course, was an advantage. But he could easily have written his thesis in Bristol. The theory was that absence made the heart grow fonder. If he had gone to his parents in York she could have phoned him every night. He wasn't going to let her know the phone number here-he didn't know it himself yet-or communicate with her at all except on the last Wednesday in the month when Roger would be out at his gun club. And he couldn't write to her at all in case Roger intercepted the letter. She'd write to him once a week. He wondered, as he unpacked his books, how that would work out, if he had been wise to let her call the tune, make all the arrangements. Well, he'd given her a deadline. By November she must know. Stay in prison or come out with him into the free air. He opened the window because the room smelt stale. Outside was a narrow yard. What light it received came from a bit of sky just flicked at its edges by leaves from a distant tree. The sky was a triangular patch because most of it was cut off by brick wall meeting brick wall diagonally about four yards up. In one of these walls-they were festooned with pipes betwigged with smaller pipes like lianas-was a door. Since there was no window beside it or anywhere near it, Anthony decided it must lead down to a cellar. Five o'clock. He had better go out and get himself something to cook on that very old and inefficient-looking Baby Belling stove. The hall smelt vaguely of cloves, less vaguely of old unwashed fabrics. That would be the bathroom, that door between his and Room 1, and that other one to the right of old Caspian's table, the loo. Wondering what sort of a woman or girl Miss Chan was and whether she would get possession of the bathroom just when he wanted to use it, he went out into the street. Trinity Road. It led him via Oriel Mews into Balliol Street. The street names of London, he thought, require an historical treatise of their own. Someone must know why this group in Hampstead are called after Devon towns and that cluster in Cricklewood after Hebridean islands. Were the Barbara, the Dorinda and the Lesley, after whom roads are named just north of the City, once the belles of Barnsbury? Did a sorcerer live in Warlock Road, Kilburn Park, and who was the Sylvia of Sylvia Gardens, Wembley, what is she, that all our maps commend her? In that corner of Kenbourne Vale, to which his destiny had drawn Anthony Johnson, someone had christened the squalid groves and terraces after Oxford colleges. A cruel joke cannot have been intended. The councillor or town planner or builder must have thought himself inspired when he named Trinity Road, All Souls' Grove, Magdalen Hill, Brasenose Avenue and Wadham Street. What was certain, Anthony thought, was that he hadn't been an Oxford man, had never walked in the enclosed quadrangles of that city or even seen its dreaming spires. Such a fanciful reverie would once have been alien to hirn. Helen had taught him to think like this, to see through her eyes, to associate, to compare, and to dream. She was an imagination, he all practical. Practical again, he noted mundane things. The Vale Cafe for quick cheap snacks; Kemal's Kebab House, smelling of cumin and sesame and fenugreek, for when he wanted to splash a bit; a pub-the Waterlily, it was called. Just opening now. Anthony saw red plush settees, a brownpainted moulded ceiling, etched glass screens beside and behind the bar. The pavements everywhere were cluttered wide garble in black plastic sacks. A dustmen's strike, perhaps. The kids were out of school. He wondered where they played. Always on these dusty pavements of Portland stone? Or on that bit of waste ground, fenced in with broken and rusty tennis court wire, between Grainger's, the builders, and the tube station? Houses marked here for demolition. The sooner they came down the better and made way for flats with big windows and green spaces to surround them. Not many truly English people about. Brown women pushing prams with black babies in them, gypsy-looking women with hard worn faces, Indian women with Marks and Spencers woolly cardigans over lilac and gold and turquoise saris. Cars parked everywhere, and vans double-parked on a street that was littered with torn paper and bruised vegetables and silvery fish scales where a market had just packed up and gone. Half-past five. But very likely that corner shop, Winter's, stayed open till all hours. He went in, bought a packet of ham, a can of beans, some bread, eggs, tea, margarine and frozen peas. Carried along by a tide of home-going commuters, he returned to 142 Trinity Road. The house was no longer empty. A man of about fifty was standing by the hall table, holding in his hand a bundle of cheap offer vouchers. He was tallish, thin, with a thin, reddish and coarse-skinned face. His thin, greyish-fair hair had been carefully combed to conceal a bald patch and was flattened with Brylcreem. He wore an immaculate dark grey suit, a white shirt and a maroon tie dotted with tiny silver spots. On his rather long, straight and quite fleshless nose, were a pair of gold-rimmed glasses. When he saw Anthony he jumped. "These were on the mat," he said. "They come every day. You wouldn't think there was a world paper shortage, would you? I tidy them up. No one else seems to be interested. But I hardly feel it's my place to throw them away." Anthony wondered why he bothered to explain. "I'm Anthony Johnson," he said. "I moved in today." The man said, "Ah," and held out his hand. He had a rather donnish look as if he perhaps had been responsible for the naming of those streets But his voice was uneducated, underlying the pedantic preciseness Kenbourne Vale's particular brand of cockney. "Moved into the little room at the back, have you? We keep ourselves very much to ourselves here. You won't use the phone after eleven, will you?" Anthony asked where the phone was. "On the first landing. My flat is on the second landing. I have a flat, you see, not a room." Light dawned. "Are you by any chance the other Johnson?" The man gave a severe, almost reproving, laugh. "I think you must mean you are the other Johnson. I have been here for twenty years." Anthony could think of no answer to make to that one. He went into Room 2 and closed the door behind him. On this mild, still summery day the room with its pipe-hung brick ramparts was already growing dark at six. He switched on the jellyfish lamp and saw how the light radiated the whole of that small courtyard. Leaning out of the window, he looked upwards. In the towering expanse of brick above him there was only one other window, and that on the top floor. The frilly net curtains behind its panes twitched. Someone had looked down at him and at the light, but Anthony's knowledge of the geography of the house was as yet insufficient to tell him who that someone might be. Every morning for the rest of that week, Arthur listened carefully for Anthony Johnson to go off to work. But Jonathan Dean and the Kotowskys always made so much noise over their own departures that it was difficult to tell. Certain it was, though, that Anthony Johnson remained at home in the evenings. Peering downwards out of his bedroom window, Arthur saw the light in Room 2 come on each evening at about six, and could tell by the pattern of two yellow rectangles divided by a dark bar, which the light made on the concrete, that Anthony Johnson didn't draw his curtains. It was a little early for him to feel an urge to visit the cellar again, and yet he was already growing restless. He thought this restlessness had something to do with frustration, with knowing that he couldn't go down there however much he might want to. On the Friday morning, while fetching in the post, he saw Anthony Johnson come out of Room E and go into the bathroom, wearing nothing but a pair of jeans. Didn't the man go to work? Was he going to stop in there all day and all night? Among that particular batch of letters was the first one to come for Anthony Johnson. Arthur knew it was for him as it was postmarked York and written on the flap was the sender's name and address: Mrs. R. L. Johnson, 22 West Highamgate, York. But the front of the envelope was addressed, quite ambiguously, to A. Johnson Esq., 2/142 Trinity Road, London WI5 6HD. Arthur sucked in his lips with an expression of exasperation. And when, a minute or so later, Anthony Johnson re-emerged, smelling of toothpaste, Arthur pointed out to him the possible consequences of such impreciseness. The young man took it very casually. "It's from my mother. I'll tell her to put Room 2, if I think of it." "I hope you will chink of it, Mr. Johnson. This sort of thing could lead to a great deal of awkwardness and embarrassment." Anthony Johnson smiled, showing beautiful teeth. He radiated health and vigour and a kind of modest virility to an extent that made Arthur uncomfortable. Besides, he didn't want to look at bare brown chests at ten past nine in the morning, thank you very much. "A great deal of awkwardness," he repeated. "Oh, I don't think so. Let's not meet trouble halfway. I don't suppose I'll get many letters, and the ones I do get will either be postmarked York or Bristol." "Very well. I thought I should mention it and I have. Now you can't blame me if there is a Mix-Up." "I shan't blame you." Arthur said no more. The man's manner floored him. It was so casual, so calm, so poised. He could have coped with defensiveness or a proper apology. This cool acceptance-no, it wasn't really cool, but warm and pleasant-of his reproach was like nothing he had ever come across. It was almost as if Anthony Johnson were the older, wiser man who could afford to treat such small local difficulties with indulgence. Arthur was more than a little irritated by it. It would have served Anthony Johnson right if, when Arthur took the post in on the following Tuesday, he had torn open the letter from Bristol without a second thought. Of course he didn't do so, although the postmark was so faint as to be almost illegible and there was no sender's name on the flap. But this one, too, was addressed to A. Johnson Esq., 2/142 Trinity Road, London WI5 6HD. The envelope was made of thick mauve-grey paper with a rough expensive-looking surface. Arthur set it on the table on the extreme right-hand side, the position he had allotted to Anthony Johnson's correspondence, and then he went into the front garden to tidy up the mess inside, on top of and around the dustbin. The dustmen had now been on strike for two weeks. In the close sunless air the rubbish smelt sour and foetid. When he went back into the house the mauve-grey envelope had gone. He didn't speculate about its contents or the identity of its sender. His concern with Anthony Johnson was simply to get some idea of the man's movements. But on the following evening, the last Wednesday of the month, he was to learn simultaneously partial answers to all these questions. It was eight o'clock and dusk. Arthur had long finished his evening meal, washed the dishes, and was about to settle in front of his television. But he remembered leaving his bedroom window open. Auntie Gracie had always been most eloquent on the subject of night air and its evil effects. As he was pulling down the sash, taking care not to catch up the fragile border of the net curtain, he saw the light, shed on the court below, go out. Quickly he went to his front door, opened it and listened. But instead of leaving the house, Anthony Johnson was coming upstairs. Arthur heard quite clearly the sound of the phone dial being spun. A lot of digits, not just the seven for London. And presently a lot of coins inserted... Anthony Johnson's voice: "I'm taking it that the coast is dear, he's not listening on this extension and he won't come up here and shoot me in the morning." A pause. Then, "Of course I'm teasing you, my love. The whole business is sick." Arthur listened intently. "I had your letter. Darling, I need footnotes. You must be the only married lady who's ever quoted The Pilgrim's Progress in a letter to her lover. It was Grace Abounding? Then I do need footnotes." A long, long pause. Anthony Johnson cursed, obviously because he had to put more money in. "Shall I transfer the charges? No, of course I won't. Roger would see it on the bill and so on and so on." Silence. Laughter. Another silence. Then: "Term starts a week today, but I'll only be going to a few lectures that touch on my subject. I'm here most of the time, working and-well, thinking, I suppose. Go out in the evenings? Lovey, where would I go and who would I go with?" Arthur closed his door, doing this in the totally silent way he had cultivated by long practice.

5

The air of West Kenbourne, never sweet, stark of rubbish. Sacks and bags and crates of rubbish made a wall along the pavement edge between the Waterlily and Kemal's Kebab House. Factory refuse and kitchen waste, leaking from broken cardboard boxes, cluttered Oriel Mews, and in Trinity Road the household garbage simmered, reeking, in the sultry sunlight. "And we've only got one little dustbin," Arthur said peevishly to Stanley Caspian. "Wouldn't make any difference if we'd got ten, they'd be full up now. Can't you put your muck in one of those black bags the council send round?" Arthur changed his tack. "It's the principle of the thing. If these men insist on striking, other arrangements should be made. I pay my rates, I've got a right to have my waste disposed of. I shall write to the local authority. They might take notice of a strongly-worded letter from a ratepayer." "Pigs might fly if they'd got wings and then we shouldn't have any more pork." Stanley roared with laughter. "Which reminds me, I'm starving. Put the kettle on, me old Arthur." He opened a bag of peanuts and another of hamburger-flavoured potato crisps. "How's the new chap settling in?" "Don't ask me," said Arthur. "You know I keep myself to myself." He made Stanley's coffee, asked for his envelope and went back upstairs. The idea of discussing Anthony Johnson was distasteful to him, and this was partly because any conversation in the hall might easily be overheard in Room 2. Stanley Caspian, of course, would be indifferent to that. Arthur wished he too could be indifferent, but there had crept upon him in the past few days a feeling that he must ingratiate himself with Anthony Johnson, not on any account offend him or win his displeasure. He now rather regretted his sharp words about the imprecise addressing of letters. Vague notions of having to become friendly-the very word distressed him-with Anthony Johnson were forming in his mind. For in this way he might perhaps persuade Anthony Johnson to draw his curtains when his light was on, or provide himself with a Venetian blind as an ostensible heat-retaining measure (Stanley Caspian would never provide one) or even succeed-and this would take much subtle and weary work-in convincing him that he, Arthur, had some legitimate occupation in the cellar, developing photographs, for instance, or doing carpentry. But he gathered up his laundry and stuffed it into the orange plastic carrier, he felt a fretful dismay. He didn't want to get involved with the man, he didn't want to get involved with anyone. How upsetting it was to have to know people, and how unnecessary it had been for twenty years! The psychopath is asocial-more than that, he is in positive conflict with society. Atavistic desires and a craving for excitement drive him. Self-centred, impulsive, he disregards society's taboos... Anthony had been making notes all the morning, but now as he heard Stanley Caspian leave the house, he laid down his pen. Was there any point in beginning on his thesis before he had attended that particular lecture on criminology? On the other hand, there was so little else to do. The music from upstairs, which had been hindering his concentration for the past half-hour, now ceased and two doors slammed. So far he had met none of the other tenants but Arthur Johnson and, as fresh sound broke out, he went into the hall. Two men were sitting on the stairs, presumably so that one of them, smallish with wild black hair, could do up his shoelaces. The other was chanting: "Then trust me, there's nothing like drinking, So pleasant on this side the grave.

It keeps the unhappy from thinking, And makes e'en the valiant more brave."

Anthony said hello. His shoelaces tied, the small dark man came down the stairs, extended his hand and said in a facetious way, "Mr. Johnson, I presume?" "That's right. Anthony. The 'other' Johnson." This remark provoked laughter out of all proportion to its wit. "Put that on your doorbell, why don't you? Brian Kotowsky at your service, and this is Jonathan Dean, the best pal a man ever had." Another hand, large, red and hairy, was thrust out. "We are about to give our right arms some exercise in a hostelry known to its habituates as the Lily, and were you to..." "He means, come and have a drink." Anthony grinned and accepted, although he was already wondering if he would regret this encounter. Jonathan Dean slammed the front door behind them and remarked that this would shake old Caspian's ceilings up a bit. They crossed Trinity Road and entered Oriel Mews, a cobbled passage whose cottages had all been converted into small factories and warehouses. The cobbles were coated with a smelly patina of potato peelings and coffee grounds, spilt from piled rubbish bags. Anthony wrinkled his nose. "Have you lived here long?" "Forever and a day, but I'm soon to depart." "Leaving me alone with that she-devil," said Brian. "Without your moderating influence she'll kill me, she'll tear me to pieces." "Very right and proper. All the best marriages are like that. Not beds of roses but fields of battle. Look at Tolstoy, look at Lawrence." They were still looking at, and hotly discussing, Tolstoy and Lawrence, when they entered the Waterlily. It was crowded, smoky and hot. Anthony bought the first round, the wisest measure if one wants to make an early escape. His tentative question had been intended as a preamble to another and now, in the first brief pause, he asked it. "What is there to do in this place?" "Drink," said Jonathan simply. "I don't mean in here. I mean Kenbourne Vale." "Drink, dispute, make love." "There's the Taj Mahal," said Brian. "It used to be called the Odeon but now it only shows Indian films. Or there's Radclyffe Park. They have concerts in Radclyffe Hall." "Christ," said Jonathan. "Better make up your mind to it, Tony, there's nothing to do but drink. This place, the Dalmatian, the Hospital Arms, the Grand Duke. What more do you want?" But before Anthony could answer him, a woman had flung into the pub and was leaning over them, her fingers whose nails were very dirty, pressed on the table top. She addressed Brian. "What the hell are you doing, coming here without me?" "You were asleep," said Brian. "You were dead to the world." "In the rank sweat," remarked Jonathan, "of an enseamed bed." "Shut up and don't be so disgusting." She levelled at him a look of scorn, such as women often reserve for those friends of their husbands who may be thought to exercise a corrupting influence. For that Brian was her husband Anthony was sure even before he waved a feeble hand and said, "My wife, Vesta." She sat down. "Your wife, Vesta, wants a drink, G. and T., a big one." She took a cigarette from her own packet and Dean one from his, but instead of holding out his lighter to her, he lit his own cigarette and put the lighter away. Turning her back on him, she struck a match and inhaled noisily. Anthony regarded her with interest. She seemed to be in her mid-thirties and she looked as if she had come out without attempting to remove the "rank sweat" of Jonathan Dean's too graphic description. Her naturally dark hair was hennaed and strands of the Medusa locks-it was as wild and unkempt as her husband's but much longer-had a vermilion metallic glint. A greasy-skinned, rather battered-looking face. Thin lips. Large red-brown angry eyes. A smell of patchouli oil. Her dress was long and of dark dirty Indian cotton, hung with beads and chains and partly obscured by a fringed red shawl. When Brian brought her gin, she clasped both her hands round the glass and stared intensely into the liquid like a clairvoyant looking into a crystal. Three more beers had also arrived. Jonathan, having directed several more insulting but this time ineffectual remarks at Vesta-remarks which seemed to gratify rather than annoy her husband-began to talk of Li-li Chan. What a 'dish' she was. How he could understand those Empire builders who had deserted their pallid dehydrated wives for Oriental mistresses. Like little flowers they were. He hoped Anthony appreciated his luck in sharing a bathroom with Li-li. And so on. Anthony decided he had had enough of it for the time being. Years of living in hall and rooming houses and hostels had taught him the folly of making friends for the sake of making friends. Sooner or later the one or two you really want for your friends will turn up, and then you have the problem of ridding yourself of these stopgaps. So when Brian began making plans for the evening, a mammoth pub crawl, he declined firmly. To his surprise, Jonathan also declined, he had some mysterious engagement, and Vesta too, suddenly becoming less zombie-like, said she was going out. Brian needn't start asking why or who with and all that. She was free, wasn't she? She hadn't got married to be harassed all the time and in public. Anthony felt a little sorry for Brian whose spaniel face easily became forlorn. "Some other time," he said, and he meant it. The sun was shining and the whole afternoon lay ahead of him. Raddyffe Park, he thought, and when the K.12 bus came along he got on it. The park was large and hardly any of it was formally laid-out. In a green space where the grass was dappled with the shadows of plane leaves, he sat down and re-read Helen's letter.

Darling Tony,

I knew I'd miss you but I didn't how how bad it would be. I feel like asking, whose idea was this, but I know we both came to it simultaneously and it's the only way. Besides, neither of us is the sort of person who can be happy in a clandestine thing, an intrigue. Being discreet seems pointless to you, doesn't it, a squalid bore, and as for me, I always hated lying to Roger. When you said-or was it I who said it?-that it must be all or nothing, I, you, us, were right. But I can't be very good at lying because I know Roger has sensed my defection. He has always been causelessly jealous but he never actually did things about it. Now he's started phoning me at work two or three times a day and last week he opened two kiters that came for me. One of them was from mother and the other was an invitation to a dress show, but I couldn't get all upstage and affronted virtue with him. How could I? After all, I do have a lover, I have deceived him...

A child, playing some distance off, gave his ball a massive kick so that it landed at Anthony's feet. He bowled it back. Funny, how people thought it was only women who wanted to marry and have children of their own.

I remember all the things you taught me, principles on which to conduct one's life. Applied Existentialism. I tell myself I am not responsible for any other adult person and that I am not in this world to live up to Roger's expectations. But I married him, Tony. Didn't I, in marrying him, go a long way towards promising to be responsible for his happiness? Didn't I more or less say that he had a right to expect much from me? And he has had so little, poor Roger. I never even pretended to love him. I haven't slept with him for six months. I only married him because he pressed me and pressed me and wouldn't take my no...

Anthony frowned when he came to that bit. He hated her weakness, her vacillations. There were whole areas of her soft sensitive personality he didn't begin to understand. But here was the Bunyan passage-that made sense.

So why don't I just tell him and cut out?-Leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell... Fear, I suppose, and compassion. But sense that was too short-lived. It's because at the moment compassion is stronger than passion that I'm here and you're alone in London...

He folded the letter and put it back in his pocket. He wasn't downcast, only rather lonely, more than rather bored. In the end she could come to him, her own feelings for him were too strong to be denied. There had been things between them she would remember in his absence, and that memory, that hope of renewal, would be stronger than any pity. In the meantime? He threw back the child's ball once more, rolled over on his side on the warm dry grass and slept. The tube took Anthony one stop back to Kenbourne Lane. At the station entrance a boy of about ten came up to him and asked him for a penny for the guy. "In September? A bit premature, aren't you?" "Got to make an early start, mister," said the boy, "or someone else'll get my patch." Anthony laughed and gave him ten pence. "I don't see any guy." "That's what me and my friend are collecting for. To get one." The children, those in the park, and the two at the station, gave him an idea. A job for the evenings and the occasional weekend afternoon, a job for which he was admirably and thoroughly trained... It was six o'clock. He let himself into Room 2, wrote his letter, addressed an envelope and affixed a stamp to it. The whole operation took no more than ten minutes, but by the time it was done the room was so dark that he had to put the jellyfish light on. Emerging, he encountered Arthur Johnson in the hall, and Arthur Johnson was also holding a letter in his hand. Anthony would have passed him with no more than a smile and a "good evening", but the "other" Johnson-or was that he?-turned, almost barring his passage, and fixed him with an intense, anxious and almost hungry look. "May I enquire if you are going out for the evening, Mr. Johnson, or merely to the post?" "Just to the post," Anthony said, surprised. The hopeful light in the other man's eyes seemed to die. And yet why should he care one way or the other? Perhaps, on the other hand, that was the answer he had wanted, for now he held out his hand, smiling with a kind of forced bonhomie, and said ingratiatingly: "Then, since I am going there myself, let me have the pleasure of taking your letter." "Thanks," Anthony said. "That's nice of you." Arthur Johnson took the letter and, without another word, left the house, closing the front door silently and with painstaking care behind him.

6

The dustmen's strike had ended, Arthur read in his paper, on the last Monday of September. Two days later, on the first Wednesday of October, he heard the crashing of lids, the creak of machinery and the (to his way of thinking) lunatic ripostes of the men, that told him Trinity Road was at last being cleared of refuse. He might have saved himself the trouble of writing to the local authority. Still, such complaints kept them on their toes; they had replied promptly enough. The brown envelope was marked: London Borough of Kenbourne and addressed to A. Johnson Esq., 142 Trinity Road, London WI5 6HD. Arthur put it in his pocket. The rest of the post, a shoe shop advertising circular for Li-li Chan and a mauve-grey envelope, postmarked Bristol, for Anthony Johnson, he arranged in their appropriate positions on the hall table. They were all out but for himself. From the phone call he had overheard, Arthur knew Anthony Johnson would be going off to college or whatever it was today, but he was relieved to have had assurance made doubly sure by the sight of the "other" Johnson, viewed from his living room window, departing at five past nine for the tube station. Not that it was of much practical assistance to him, as he too must go to work in ten minutes; it was simply comforting to know the man went out sometimes. It was a beginning. He went back upstairs and slit the letter open with one of Auntie Gracie's silver fruit knives. London Borough of Kenbourne, Department of Social Services. Well, he'd have expected to hear from the sanitary inspector but you never could tell these days. Dear Sir, in reply to your letter of the 28th inst., requesting information as to the availability of work in children's play centres within the Borough, we have to inform you that such centres would come under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority and are not our... Arthur realised what had happened and he was appalled. That he-he out of the two of them-should be the one to open a letter in error! It would have mattered so much less if it had been someone else's letter, that giggly little Chinese piece, for instance, or that drunk, Dean. Obviously the letter must be returned. Arthur was so shaken by what he had done that he couldn't bring himself to write the necessary note of apology on the spot. Besides, it would make him late for work. It was nearly a quarter past nine. He put the envelope and its contents into his empty briefcase and set off. The demolition men were at work and Auntie Gracie's living room-brown lincrusta, marble fireplace, pink-linoleum-all exposed to the public view. There on the ochre-coloured wallpaper was the paler rectangle marking where the sideboard had stood, the sideboard into whose drawer he had shut the mouse. His first killing. Auntie Gracie had died in that room, and from it he had gone out to make death... Why think of all that now? He felt sick. He unlocked the gates and let himself into his office, wishing there was some way of insulating the place from the sounds of hammer blows and falling masonry, but by the time Barry lounged in at a quarter to ten, he was already composing the first draught of a note to Anthony Johnson. Fortunately, there was very little correspondence for Grainger's that day, the books were in apple pie order and well up to date. Arthur found the task before him exacting, and one draught after another went into the wastepaper basket. But by one o'clock the letter-handwritten, as typewritten notes were discourteous-was as perfect a specimen of its kind as he could achieve. Dear Mr. Johnson, please accept my heartfelt apologies for having opened your letter in error. Considering the gravity of this intrusion into your private affairs, I think it only proper to give you a full explanation. I was myself expecting a letter from the council of the London Borough of Kenbourne in reply to one of my own requesting action to be taken with regard to the disgraceful situation concerning the cessation of a regular refuse collection. Reading the Borough's name on the envelope, I opened it without more ado only to find that the communication was intended for your good self. Needless to say, I did not read more than was strictly necessary to inform me that I was not the proper recipient. In hopes that you will be kind enough to overlook what was, in fact, a genuine mistake, I am, Yours sincerely, Arthur Johnson. Who could tell what time Anthony Johnson would return? Arthur let himself into a hundred and forty-two at 1.15. The house was silent, empty, and the mauve-grey envelope was still on the hall table. Beside it, neatly aligned to it, Arthur placed the Kenbourne council letter and his own note, the two fastened together with a paper clip. When he returned from work just before 5.30 all the letters were still there and the house was still empty. Alone in his flat, he began to speculate as to Anthony Johnson's reaction. Perhaps the whole incident would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Anthony Johnson would read his note, be moved by its earnest rectitude, and come immediately upstairs to tell Arthur he quite understood and not to give it another thought. This would be his chance. He put the kettle on, set a tray with the best china, and left his front door on the latch so that Anthony Johnson would know he was expected and welcomed. For, irksome as it was to entertain someone and make conversation, it was now of paramount importance. And how wonderful if, in the course of that conversation, Anthony Johnson should announce his intention of securing an evening job-as the letter had intimated he might. He sat by the window, looking down. Li-li Chan was the first to get home. She arrived with a different young man in a green sports car, and ten minutes after they got into the house Arthur heard her on the phone. "No, no, I tell you I very sorry." Li-li almost, but not quite, said "velly". "You give theatre ticket some other nice girl. I wash my hair, stay in all night. Oh, but you are so silly. I don't love you because I wash my hair? I say I do love you, I love lots, lots of people, so good-bye now!" Arthur craned his neck to see her and her escort leap into the car and roar off in the direction of Kenbourne Lane. He waited. Vesta Kotowsky came in alone, looking sultry. There was one, Arthur thought, who could do with an evening at home to get that draggled greasy hair washed. At five past six Anthony Johnson emerged from under the arched entrance to Oriel Mews. And as Arthur watched him approach, the tall well-proportioned figure, the firm-featured handsome face, the mane of hair crowning a shapely head, he felt a stirring of something that was part envy, part resentment. Yet this wasn't evoked by the 'other' Johnson's good looks-hadn't he, Arthur, had just as great a share of those himself?-or by his occupancy of Room 2. Rather it was that there, in the process of its mysterious unfair workings, fate had been kinder. Fate hadn't saddled this man with a propensity that placed his life and liberty at constant risk... The front door of the house closed with a thud midway between Arthur's pernickety click and Jonathan Dean's ceiling-splitting crash. Ten minutes went by, a quarter of an hour, half an hour. Arthur was on tenterhooks. It was getting almost too late for tea. Time he started cooking his meal. The idea of anyone even tapping at the door, let alone coming in, while he was eating was unthinkable. Should he go down himself? Perhaps. Perhaps he should reinforce his note with a personal appearance and a personal apology. A car door slammed. He rushed back to the window. It was the Kotowsky car, and Brian Kotowsky and Jonathan Dean got out of it. There followed a resounding crash of the front door. A long pause of silence and then a single set of footsteps mounted the stairs. Could it be at last...? But, no. Dean's door banged beneath him. Very uneasy now, Arthur stood at the window. And again Brian Kotowsky appeared. Arthur caught his breath in sharply as he saw Anthony Johnson also emerge from the house. He looked reluctant, even irritable. "All right," Arthur heard him say, "but it'll have to be a quick one. I've got work to do." They crossed the road, bound for the Waterlily. Arthur crept down the first flight. A low murmur of voices could be heard from Jonathan Dean's room and then a soft throaty laugh. He went on down. From over the bannisters he saw that the hall table was bare but for the inevitable cheap offer vouchers. Li-li Chan's shoe shop circular and the two envelopes for Anthony Johnson had gone. Arthur stood by the table, nonplussed. Then some screws of paper lying in Stanley Caspian's wastepaper basket caught his eye. He picked them out. They were the note he had written with such care and anxiety to Anthony Johnson and the envelope in which the council's letter had been contained. The Inner London Education Authority told Anthony that they couldn't possibly say over the phone whether they had a vacancy for him or not. Would he write in? He wrote and got a very belated reply full of delaying tactics which amounted to telling him that he had better apply again at Christmas. At least the Kenboume authority had replied promptly. Anthony smiled ruefully to himself when he recalled the evening on which he had received their reply. It had been fraught with annoyance. Firstly had come that letter from Helen, a letter which was more like an essay on Roger's miseries. I sit reading escapist literature and every time I look up I find his eyes on me, staring accusingly, and every little innocent remark I make he takes me up on ("What's that supposed to mean? What are you getting at?") so that I'm like some wretched shoplifter being interrogated by the great detective. I started to cry last night and-Oh, it was awful-he began to cry too. He knelt at my feet and begged me to love him... Anthony had been so exasperated by this letter which, in his delight at receiving it, he had stood reading out in the hall by the table, that it was some minutes before he had even noticed that there was another one for him. And when he did, when he opened and read that ridiculous note from Arthur Johnson, his impatience had reached such a pitch that he had screwed it up and tossed it into the wastepaper basket. It was at this point that Brian Kotowsky had arrived and, deserted by the best pal a man ever had, had pressed him to accompany him to the Waterlily. There Anthony had been obliged to listen to a dissertation on the horrors of matrimony, the undesirable independence having a job of her own gave to a wife, and what Brian would do after Jonathan's departure he honestly didn't know. Obliged to listen, but not for more than half an hour. Returning alone to a hundred and forty-two Anthony considered going upstairs to reassure Arthur Johnson. The man obviously had an acute anxiety neurosis. A better-adjusted person would simply have scribbled Sorry I opened your letter and left it at that. The circumlocutions, the polysyllabic words were pathetic. They breathed a tense need for the preservation of an immaculate ego, they smelt of paranoia, fear of retribution, a desire to be thought well of by all men, even strangers. But men like that, he thought, cannot be reassured, their deep-seated belief in their own worthlessness is too great and too longestablished at fifty for self-confidence ever to be implanted in them. Besides, Arthur Johnson liked to keep himself to himself, and would probably only be further perturbed by an invasion of his privacy. Much better wait until they happened to meet in the hall. In the week which followed he didn't encounter Arthur Johnson but he was again accosted by the children at Kenbourne Lane station. "Penny for the guy, mister?" "Where are you going to have your bonfire?" asked Anthony. "In Radclyffe Park?" He handed over another ten pence. "We asked. The park keeper won't let us, rotten old bastard. We could have it in our backyard if my dad lets us." "Old Mother Winter," said the other boy, "got the cops last time your dad had a bonfire." Anthony went off down Magdalen Hill. The kids and their parents called it Mag-da-lene, just as they called Balliol Street Bawlial. How stupid these pseudo-intellectuals were-Jonathan Dean was one of them-to sneer at mispronunciations. If the people who lived here hadn't the right to call their streets what they wanted, who had? His eye was caught by the piece of waste ground, enclosed by its rusty tennis court netting. The authorities wouldn't let him do official social work, but why shouldn't he do some privately and off his own bat? Why not, in fact, think about organising November 5th celebrations on that bit of ground? The idea was suddenly appealing. He gazed through the wire at the hillocky weed-grown wilderness. On one side of it was the cutting through which the tube ran down to London, on the other the mountains of brown brick, broken woodwork and yellow crumbled plaster which was all that remained now of the demolished houses. Backing on to the ground rose the grey-brown rears of Brasenose Avenue terraces, tall tenements hung with Piranesi-like iron stairways. A man seen building a bonfire there would soon attract all the juvenile society in the neighbourhood. And he could rope in the parents, mothers especially, to organise a supper. The great Kenbourne Vale Guy Fawkes Rave-up, he thought. Why, he might set a precedent and they'd start having one there every year. It was six o'clock on a Friday evening, Friday, October twelfth. If he was going to do it he'd better start on the organisation tomorrow. Work tonight, though. Seated at the table in Room 2, its gateleg propped up with Arieti's The Intrapsychic Self, Anthony assembled and read his notes. Not to be classified as schizophrenic, manic-depressive or paranoid. Condition cannot strictly be allied to any of these. Psychopath characteristically unable to form emotional relationships. If these are formed-fleetingly and sporadically-purpose is direct satisfaction of own desires. Guiltless and loveless. Psychopath has learned few socialised ways of coping with frustrations. Those he has learned (e. g. a preoccupation with "hard" pornography) may be themselves at best grotesque. For his actions... With a sudden fizzle, the light bulb in the jellyfish shade went out. Anthony cursed. For a few moments he sat there in the dark, wondering whether to appeal for help from Jonathan or the Kotowskys. But that would only involve him in another drinking session. The gentle closing of the front door a minute or two before had told him of Li-li's departure. He'd have to go out and buy another light bulb. Just as well Winter's didn't close till eight. Making for the front door, he was aware of footsteps on the landing above him. Arthur Johnson. But as he hesitated, glancing up the stairs-now might be an opportunity for that belated reassurance-he saw the figure of which he had only caught a glimpse retreat. Anthony shrugged and went off in search of his light bulb.

7

Arthur was certain he had given mortal offence to Anthony Johnson and thus had wrecked his own hopes. Now there was nothing for it but to watch and wait. Sooner or later the "other" Johnson must go out in the evening. He went out by day on Saturdays and Sundays all right, but what was the use of that? It was darkness that Arthur needed, darkness to give the illusion that the side passage, the courtyard, the cellar, were the alley, the mews, the deserted shadowed space that met his desires. Darkness and the absence of noisy people, car doors slamming, interference... He could remember quite precisely when this need had first come upon him. The need to use darkness. He was twelve. Auntie Gracie had had two friends to tea and they were sitting in the back round the fire, drinking from and eating off that very china he had set out in vain for Anthony Johnson. Talking about him. He would have liked, as he would often have liked, to retreat to his own bedroom. But this was never allowed except at bedtime when, as soon as he was in bed, Auntie Gracie would turn off the light at the switch just inside the door and forbid him on pain of punishment to turn it on again. The landing light was always left on, so Arthur wasn't afraid. He would have preferred, in fact longed for, enough light to read by or else total darkness. Mrs. Goodwin and Mrs. Courthope, those were the friends' names. Arthur had to sit being good, being a credit to Auntie Gracie. They talked a lot about some unnamed boy-he supposed must be himself from the mysterious veiled way they spoke and the heavy meaningful glances exchanged. "Of course it puts a stigma on a child he can never shake off," Mrs. Goodwin said. Instead of answering, Auntie Gracie said, "Go into the other room, Arthur, and get me another teaspoon out of the sideboard. One of the best ones, mind, with the initial on." Arthur went. He didn't close the door after him but one of them closed it. The hall light was on so he didn't put on the front room light, and as a result he opened the wrong drawer by mistake. As he did so a mouse scattered like a flash across the sideboard top and slithered into the open drawer. Arthur slammed it shut. He took an initialled spoon out of the other drawer and stood there, holding the spoon, his heart pounding. The mouse rushed around inside the drawer, running in desperate circles, striking its head and body against the wooden walls of its prison. It began to squeak. The cheep-cheep sounds were like those made by a baby bird, but they were sounds of pain and distress. Arthur felt a tremendous deep satisfaction that was almost happiness. It was dark and he was alone and he had enough power over something to make it die. Strangely enough, the women didn't seem to have missed him, although he had been gone for quite five minutes. They stopped talking abruptly when he came in. After Mrs. Goodwin and Mrs. Courthope had gone, Auntie Gracie washed up and Arthur dried. She sent him to put the silver away which was just as well, because if she had gone she would have heard the mouse. It had stopped squeaking and was making vague brushing, scratching sounds, feeble and faint. Arthur didn't open the drawer. He listened to the sounds with pleasure. When he did at last open it on the following evening, the mouse was dead and the drawer, which contained a few napkin rings and a spare cruet, spattered all over with its blood. Arthur had no interest in the corpse. He let Auntie Gracie find it a week or so later, which she did with many shrieks and shudders. Darkness. He thought often in those days of the mouse afraid and trapped in the dark and of himself powerful in it. How he longed to be allowed out in the streets after dark! But even when he was at work and earning, Auntie Gracie wanted him to come straight home. And he had to please her, he had to be worthy of her. Besides, defiance of her was too enormous an enterprise even to consider. So he went out in the evenings only when she went with him, and once a week they went together to the Odeon that was now Indian and called the Taj Mahal. Until one night when old Mr. Grainger, catching him in the yard as he was sweeping up at five-thirty, sent him over to the other side of Kenbourne to pick up an electric drill some workman had been careless enough to leave behind in a house where he was doing a re-wiring job. He'd tell Miss Johnson on his way home, he told Arthur, and he was to cut along as fast as he could. Arthur collected the drill. The darkness-it was midwinter-was even lovelier than he thought it would be. And how very dark it was then, how much darker than nowadays! The blackout. The pitch darkness of wartime. In the dark he brushed against people, some of whom carried muffled torches. And in a winding little lane, now destroyed and lost, replaced by a mammoth housing complex, he came up against a girl hurrying. What had made him touch her? Ah, if he knew that he would know the answer to many things. But he had touched her, putting out his hand, for he was already as tall as a man, to run one finger down the side of her warm neck. Her scream as she fled was more beautiful in his ears than the squeaking of the mouse. He stared after her, into the darkness after her, emotion surging within him like thick scented liquid boiling. He knew what he wanted to do, but thought intervened to stay him. He had read the newspapers, listened to the wireless, and he knew what happened to people who wanted what he wanted. No doubt, it was better not to go out after dark. Auntie Gracie knew best. It was almost as if she had known why, though that was nonsense, for she had never dreamed... His own dreams had been troubling him this past fortnight, the consequence of frustration. Each evening at eleven, before going to bed, he had taken a last look out of his bedroom window to see the courtyard below aglow with light from Room 2. It seemed a personal affront and, in a way, a desecration of the place. Moreover, Anthony Johnson hadn't been near him, had avoided all contact with him. Arthur wouldn't have known he was in the house but for the arrival, and the subsequent removal from the hall table, of another of those Bristol letters, and of course that ever-burning light. Then, on a Friday evening just before eight, it went out. Carrying his torch, Arthur let himself out of his flat and came softly down the top flight. He had heard the front door close, but that might have been Li-li Chan going out. Both she and Anthony Johnson closed it with the same degree of moderate care. And it must have been she, for as Arthur hesitated on the landing he saw Anthony Johnson appear in the hall below him. Arthur stepped back and immediately the front door closed. Through its red and green glass panels the shape of Anthony Johnson could be seen as a blur vanishing down the marble steps. No one, Arthur reasoned, went out at this hour if he didn't intend to stay out for some time. He descended the stairs and, delaying for a moment or two to let the occupant of Room 2 get clear, left the house, crossed the lawn and entered the side passage. There was no moon. The darkness wasn't total but faintly lit by the far-reaching radiance of street lamps and house lights, and the sky above, a narrow corridor of it, was a gloomy greyish-red; the darkness, in fact, of any slum backwater. And this passage resembled, with the colouring of Arthur's imagination, some alleyway, leading perhaps from a high road to a network of shabby streets. The muted roar of traffic was audible, but this only heightened his illusion. He crossed the little court, all the muscles of his body tense and tingling, and opened the cellar door. It was three weeks since he had been here, and being here at last after so much dread and anguish brought him a more than usually voluptuous pleasure. Even more than usual, it was nearly as good as the real thing, as Maureen Cowan and Bridget O'Neill. So he walked slowly between the jumbled metal rubbish, the stacks of wood and newspapers, his torch making a quivering light which snaked ahead of him. And there, in the third room, she was waiting. His reactions to her varied according to his mood and hid tensions. Sometimes she was no more than the instrument of his therapy, a quick assuagement. But there were times, and this was one of them, when strain and memory had so oppressed him and anticipation been so urgent that the whole scene and she in it were altered and aggrandized by enormous fantasy. So it was now. This was no cellar in Trinity Road but the deserted, seldom-frequented yard between a warehouse, say, and a cemetery wall; she no lifesize doll but a real woman waiting perhaps for her lover. The light of his torch fell on her. It lit her blank eyes, then, deflecting, allowed shadows to play like fear on her face. He stood still, but he could have sworn she moved. There was no sanctuary for her, no escape, nothing but the brick wall rising behind her to a cracked cobweb-hung sky. His torch became a street lamp, shining palely now from a corner. On an impulse he put it out. Absolute silence, absolute darkness. She was trying to get away from him. She must be, for as he felt his way towards the wall he couldn't find her. He touched the damp brickwork, and a trickle of water fell between his fingers. He moved them along the wall, feeling for her, grunting now, making strong gruff exhalations. Then his hand touched her dress, moved up to her cold neck. But it felt warm to him and soft, like Bridget O'Neill's. Was it he or she who gave that choking stifled cry? This time he used his tie to strangle her, twisting it until his hands were sore. It took Arthur a long time to recover-about ten minutes, which was much longer than usual. But the deed had been more exciting and more satisfying than usual, so that was only to be expected. He restored her to her position against the wall, picked up the torch and made his way back to the cellar door. Cautiously he opened it. The window of Room 2 was still dark. Good. Excellent. He stepped out into the yard, turned to close the door behind him. As he did so the whole court was suddenly flooded with light. And this light was as terrifying to him as the beam of a policeman's torch is to a burglar. He wanted to wheel round, but he forced himself to turn slowly, expecting to meet the eyes of Anthony Johnson. At first he saw only the interior of Room 2, the pale green flecked walls, the gateleg table propped by and piled with books, the primrose washbasin and that light glowing inside the pink and green polythene shade which, for some reason, was swinging like a pendulum. Then Anthony Johnson appeared under the swinging lamp, crossing the room; now, at last, staring straight back at him. Arthur didn't wait. He hastened across the court, his head bent, a burning flush mounting across his head and neck. He scuttled through the passage, let himself into the house and went swiftly upstairs. There, in his own flat, he sat down heavily. Vesta Kotowsky had come up in his absence and pushed her rent under his door, but he was so upset he let the envelope lie there on the doormat. His hands were trembling. Anthony Johnson had returned within less than half an hour of going out. It almost looked as if the whole exercise had been a plot to catch Arthur. But how could he know? He would know now or know something. Probably he was looking for some way of getting back at him for opening that letter. On the face of it, that letter hadn't seemed very private, not like the ones postmarked Bristol would be, but you never could tell. It might be that this college of his had some sort of rule about students not taking jobs-Arthur admitted to himself that he knew very little about these things-and that he would be expelled or sent down or whatever they called it for attempting to do so. After all, what else could explain Anthony Johnson's enraged rejection of his note, his deliberate shunning of him, his sneaking out like that followed by his purposeful illumination of the courtyard just as Arthur was emerging from the cellar? The euphoria he felt after one of his killings totally ruined, Arthur passed a bad night. He sweated profusely so that he fancied the pink sheets smelt bad, and he stripped them off in a frenzy of disgust. Li-li had put her rent envelope under his door at some time in the small hours. By half-past nine he had assembled hers, the two envelopes of the Kotowskys'-Vesta insisted on paying her half-share separately from that of her husband-and his own and was seated downstairs waiting for Stanley Caspian. No more rent from Jonathan Dean who would be leaving today, thank God, and none to collect (thank God again) from Anthony Johnson who had paid two months in advance. The hall was cold and damp. It was a foggy morning, an early harbinger of the winter to come. Stanley stumped in at ten past ten, wearing a checked windcheater that looked as if it was made from a car rug, and carrying a huge cellophane bag containing cheese puff cocktail snacks. Arthur began to feel queasy because the cheese puffs, orangey-brown, fat and curvy, reminded him of overfed maggots. Stanley split the bag open before he had even sat down, and some of the cheese larvae spilt out on to the desk. "Put the kettle on, me old Arthur. Have a Wiggly-Yoggly?" "No, thank you," said Arthur quietly. He cleared his throat. "I was down the cellar last night." Forcing the carefully planned lie out with all the casualness he could muster, he said, "Looking for a screwdriver, as a matter of fact. The wites had come out of one of my little electric plugs." Stanley looked at him truculently. "You're always grumbling these days, Arthur. First it was the dustbin, now it's the electricity. I suppose that's your way of saying I ought to have the place re-wired." "Not at all. I was simply explaining how I happened to be in the cellar. In case-well, in case anyone might think I was snooping." Stanley picked cheese puff crumbs off the bulge of his belly whose ridges seemed as if they had been artfully designed to catch everything their possessor spilt. "I couldn't care less if you go down the cellar, me old Arthur. Have yourself a ball. Ask some girls round. If you like spending your evenings in cellars that's your business. Right?" Somehow, though he had intended wit, Stanley had got very near the truth. Arthur blushed. He was almost trembling. It was all he could do to control himself while Stanley filled in his rent book, banging in the full stops until it looked as if he would break his pen. Arthur put it back in its envelope himself and, muttering his usual excuse about Saturday being a busy day, made for the stairs. Half-way up them, he heard Anthony Johnson come out of Room 2 and say to Stanley-in mockery? He must have been listening behind the door-his own words of a few moments before: "I was down your cellar last night."

8

Winter's being out of stock of all but forty watt light bulbs, Arithony had been obliged to go as far as the open-till-midnight supermarket at the northern end of Kenbourne Lane. This unsettled him for work, and when he saw Arthur Johnson coming out of the cellar its possibilities intrigued him. He had penetrated no further than the first room, but that was enough. Stanley Caspian burst into gales of laughter. "I suppose you were looking for a screw?" Anthony shrugged. Bawdy talk from a man of Caspian's age and girth disgusted him. "You've got a lot of wood and cardboard and stuff down there," he said. "If you don't want it, can I have it? It's for a Guy Fawkes bonfire." "Help yourself," said Stanley Caspian. "Everyone got very interested in my cellar all of a sudden, I must say. You weren't planning to have this here bonfire on my premises, I hope?" Anthony said no, thanks, it wasn't suitable, which didn't seem the reply to gratify Caspian, and left him to his rents. He walked over to the station where the little boys were once more at their post, and with them this time a black child. The white children knew him by now. Instead of asking for money, they said hello. "Why don't we have a bonfire on that bit of waste ground?" But even as he spoke he checked himself. Wasn't that the insinuating approach a child molester would use? "If you like the idea," he said quickly, "we'll go and talk to your parents about it." Leroy, the coloured boy, lived with his mother in a groundfloor flat in Brasenose Avenue. Linthea Carville turned out to be a part-time social worker, which gave her an immediate affinity with Anthony, though he would in any case have been drawn to her. He couldn't help staring at her, this tall daughter of African gods, with her pearly-bloomed dark face, and her black hair, oiled and satiny, worn in a heavy knot on the crown of her head. But he remembered his plan, explained it, and within ten minutes they had been joined by white neighbours, the chairman of the Brasenose Tenants' Association, and by the mother of Leroy's taller friend, Steve. The chairman was enthusiastic about Anthony's idea. For months his association had been campaigning for the council to convert the waste ground into a children's playground. This would be a feather in its cap. They could have a big party on 5th of November and maybe invite a council representative to be present. Linthea said she would make hot dogs and enlist the help of another friend, the mother of David, the third boy. And when Anthony told them about the wood, Steve said his elder brother had a box barrow which he could bring over to a hundred and forty-two on the following Saturday. Then they discussed the guy-Steve's mother said she would dress in a discarded suit of her husband's. Linthea made lots of strong delicious coffee, and it was nearly lunchtime before Anthony went back to Trinity Road. He had forgotten that this was the day of Jonathan Dean's departure. The move, he now saw, was well underway. Jonathan and Brian were carrying crates down the stairs and packing them into Brian's rather inadequate car. Vesta was nowhere to be seen. "I'll give you a hand," Anthony said, and regretted the offer when Brian slapped him on the back and remarked that after Jonathan had deserted him he would know where to turn for a pal. Jonathan, like Anthony, possessed no furniture of his own but he had hundreds of records and quite a few books, the heaviest and most thumbed of which was the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. While they worked and ate the fish and chips Brian had been sent out to buy, the record player remained on, and the laughter sequence from Strauss's Elektra roared out so maniacally that Anthony expected Arthur Johnson to appear at any moment and complain. But he didn't appear even when Jonathan dropped a crate of groceries on the stairs and collapsed in fits of mirth at the sight of egg yolk and H. P. Sauce and extended life milk dripping from the treads. They had to make several journeys. Jonathan's new home was a much smaller room that the one he had occupied at a hundred and forty-two, in a squalid run-down house in the worst part of South Kenbourne. And this alternative to Trinity Road seemed to perplex Brian as much as it did Anthony. What had possessed Jonathan? he kept asking. Why not change his mind even at this late stage? Caspian would surely let him keep his old room if he asked. "No, he wouldn't," said Jonathan. "He's let it to some Spade." And he added, like Cicero but less appositely, "O limpora! O mores!" The record player was the last thing to be shifted. A container was needed in which to transport it so Brian and Anthony went down to Anthony's room where Anthony said he had found a cardboard box in the wardrobe. The books impressed Brian and soon he had found out all about Anthony's thesis, taking up much the same attitude to it as he would have done had he learned Anthony was writing a thriller. "There's a study for you," he said as they drove past the cemetery. "You could use that in your writing. Twenty-five years ago last month that's where the Kenbourne Killer strangled his first victim. Maureen Cowan, she was called." "What, in the cemetery?" "No, in the path that runs along the back of it. A lot of people use that path as a short cut from the Hospital Arms to Elm Green station. She was a tart, soliciting down there. Mind you, I was only a kid at the time but I remember it all right." "Kid?" said Jonathan. "You mean you're kidding. You were thirteen." Brian looked hurt but he made no response. "They never caught the chap. He struck again"-he employed the journalese quite unconsciously as if it were standard usage-"five years later. That time it was student nurse called Bridget Something-Irish girl. He strangled her on a bit of open ground between the hospital and the railway bridge. Now would he be a psychopath, Tony?" "I suppose so. Was it the same man both times?" "The cops thought so. But there were never any more murders-not unsolved ones, I mean. Now why, Tony, would you say that was?" "Moved out of the district," said Anthony who was getting bored. "Or died," he added, for he had been less than a year old when that first murder was committed. "Could have been in prison for something else," said Brian. "Could have been in a mental home. I've often wondered about that and whether he'll ever come back and strike again." He parked the car outside Jonathan's new home. "What a dump! You could still change your mind, Jon old man. Move in with Vesta and me for a bit. Have our couch." "Christ," said Jonathan. "There's one born every minute." He delivered this platitude as if it were a quotation, as perhaps, Anthony thought, it was. They invited him to accompany them to the Grand Duke for an evening's drinking, but Anthony refused. It was nearly five. He went home and read J. G. Miller's doctoral dissertation: Eyeblink Conditioning of Primary and Neurotic Psychopaths, remembering at ten to put his clock and his watch back. It was the end of British Summertime. Watching from his eyrie, his living room window, Arthur saw the new tenant of Room 3 arrive on Sunday afternoon. At first he thought this must be some visitor, a disreputable friend perhaps of Li-li or Anthony Johnson, for he couldn't recollect any previous tenant having arrived in such style. The man was as black as the taxi from which he alighted, and not only black of skin and hair. He wore a black leather coat which, even from that distance, Arthur could see had cost a lot of money, and he carried two huge black leather suitcases. To Arthur's horrified eyes, he resembled some Haitian gangster-cum-political bigwig. He had seen such characters on television and he wouldn't have been surprised to learn that a couple of revolvers and a knife were concealed under that flashy coat. Staying here obviously, but as whose guest? Arthur put his own front door on the latch and listened. The house door closed quietly, footsteps crossed the hall, mounted the stairs. He peeped out in time to see a sepia-coloured hand adorned with a plain gold signet ring insert a key in the lock of Room 3. He was incensed. Once again Stanley Caspian hadn't bothered to tell him he'd let a room. Once again he had been slighted. For two pins he'd write a strongly-worded letter to Stanley, complaining of ill-usage. But what would be the use? Stanley would only say Arthur hadn't given him the chance to tell him, and it was vain to grumble about the new man's colour with this Race Relations Act restricting landlords the way it did. On Tuesday Arthur learned his name. He took in the letters, a whole heap of them this morning. One for Li-li from Taiwan, sender Chan Ah Feng; two for Anthony Johnson, one postmarked York, the other, in a mauve-grey envelope, Bristol. Her letters, Arthur had noted, always came on a Tuesday or a Wednesday, and were still addressed to A. Johnson Esq., 2/142 Trinity Road. Mrs R. L. Johnson, however, had learned sense and put Room 2. All the other correspondence, five official-looking envelopes, was for Winston Mervyn Esq., 3/142 Trinity Road. Winston! The cheek of it, some West Indian grandchildren of slaves christening their son after the greatest Englishman of the century! It seemed to Arthur an added effrontery that this presumptuous black should receive letters so soon after his arrival-five letters to fill up the table and make him look important. But he didn't see the new tenant or hear a sound from him, though nightly he listened for voodoo drums. As Anthony had expected, the departure of Jonathan Dean was the signal for Brian to put on the pressure. He was marked to succeed Jonathan, and evening after evening there came a knock on the door of Room 2 and a plaintive invitation to go drinking in the Lily. "I do have to work," Anthony said after the fourth time of asking. "Sorry, but that's the way it is." Brian gave him his beaten spaniel look. "I suppose the fact is you don't like me. I bore you. Go on, you may as well admit it. I am a bore. I ought to know it by now, Vesta's told me often enough." "Since you ask," said Anthony, "yes, it'd bore me going out and getting pissed every night. And I can't afford it." He relented a little. "Come in here for a while tomorrow night, if you like. I'll get some beer in." Brightening, Brian said he was a pal, and turned up at seven sharp on the Friday with a bottle of vodka and one of French vermouth which made Anthony's six cans of beer look pathetic. He talked dolefully about his job-he sold antiques in a shop owned by Vesta's brother-about the horrors of living always in furnished rooms, Vesta's refusal to have children even if they got a house, her perpetual absences in the evenings-worse than ever this week-his drink problem, and did Anthony think he was an alcoholic? Anthony let him talk, replying occasionally in monosyllables. He was thinking about Helen's latest letter. It was all very well to talk of absence making the heart grow fonder, but "out of sight, out of mind" may be just as true as truism. He hadn't expected her letters to concentrate quite so much on Roger's woes. Roger had scarcely been mentioned during that summer of snatched meetings, that clandestine fortnight of love when a shadowy husband had been away somewhere on a business trip. Now it was Roger, Roger, Roger. I ask myself if it wouldn't be better for both of us to try and forget each other. We could, Tony. Novelli, whom you have called hyper-romantic, shows that people don't go on loving hopelessly for years. The Troilus and Cressida story may be beautiful but you and I know it isn't real. We should get over it. You'd marry someone who is free and trouble-free and I'd settle down with Roger. I just don't think I can face Roger's misery and violence, and not just for a while but for months, years. I'd know for years that I'd ruined his life... Stupid, Anthony thought. Illogical. He and she wouldn't go on loving hopelessly for years, but Roger would. Of all the irrational nonsense... He said "Yes" and "I see" and "That's bad" for about the fiftieth time to Brian and then, because he couldn't take any more, he bundled him out with his two half-empty bottles under his arm. Having drunk no more than a pint of beer himself, he set to work and was still writing at two in the morning. The coarse talking-with-his-mouth-full voice of Stanley Caspian woke him at ten, and he waited until he and Arthur Johnson had gone before going to the bathroom. It was lucky he happened to be in the hall when Linthea Camille, her son and Steve and David arrived, for it was Arthur Johnson's bell they rang. Anthony saw them silhouetted behind the red and green glass and, making a mental note that sometime he must put his own name under his own bell, he went outside and took them round the back to the cellar. Linthea had brought a torch and two candles, and the boys had the box barrow. They didn't take the barrow down but carried the wood up in armfuls. He was impressed by Linthea's strength. She had a perfect body, muscular, but curvy and lithe as well, and the jeans and sweater she wore did nothing to impede those graceful movements which he found himself watching with a slightly guilty pleasure. "There's more wood here than I thought," he said hastily when he realised she was aware of his gaze. "We'll have to make a second journey," and he pushed the door as if to shut it. "Don't forget my boy's still down there," said Linthea. "They all are. And they've got your torch." The training they had in common had prevented them from falling into the adult trap of doing all the work themselves on the grounds that they could do it faster and more efficiently than the children. But once the barrow was filled, they had left the boys to explore the rest of the cellar. Linthea called out, "Leroy, where are you?" and there came back a muffled excited call of "Mum!" which held in it a note of thrill and mischief. David and Steve were sitting on an upturned box, the torch between them, in the first room of the cellar. They giggled when they saw Linthea. Carrying a candle, she went on through the second room, walking rather fastidiously between the banks of rubbish. Anthony was just behind her and when, at the entrance to the last and final room, her candle making the one tiny puddle of light in all that gloom, she stopped and let out a shriek of pure terror, he caught her shoulders in his hands. Her fear was momentary. The shriek died away into a cascade of West Indian merriment, and she ran forward, shaking off Anthony's hands, to catch hold of the boy who was hiding in a corner. Then and only then did he see what she had seen and which had sent that frightened thrill through her. As the candlelight danced, as the woman caught the laughing boy, the torch beam levelled from behind him by Steve, showed him the pale figure leaning against the wall, a black handbag hooked over one stiff arm. "You wanted to give your poor mother a heart attack, I know you," Linthea was saying, and the boy: "You were scared, you were really scared." "They were all in it," said Anthony. "I wonder how on earth that thing came to be down here." He went up to the model, staring curiously at the battered face and the great rent in its neck. Then, hardly knowing why, he touched its cold smooth shoulders. Immediately his fingertips seemed again to remember the feel of Linthea's fine warm flesh, and he realised how hungry he had been to touch a woman. There was something obscene about the figure in front of him, that dead mockery of femaleness with its pallid hard carapace as cold as the shell of a reptile and its attenuated unreal limbs. He wanted to knock it down and leave it to lie on the sooty floor, but he restrained himself and turned quickly away. The others were waiting for him, candles and torch accounted for, at the head of the steps.

9