The Collected Short Fiction Part 55

'I said I was here to protect you,' affirmed Uncle Stephen, 'and I shall do it still. I have always won the last battle. Always and always.'

'Come away with me, Uncle Stephen, while there's time.'

He went through burlesque bristling motions. 'You don't suppose I shall knuckle down to a couple of schoolboys with their pockets full of gum.' He expressed it facetiously, but of course he meant it, could hardly have meant it more.

Now that the firing had ceased for some time, the encircling host had begun to relax. Cups of tea were being consumed; ambulance workers were chatting to firemen on familiar subjects, their respective rates of pay and conditions of employment, their pension prospects, the maladies of their dear ones.

'Oh come on, Uncle Stephen. If the boys have gone, we can go too.'

To her consternation, he was not to be budged. 'No, girl,' he said. 'This is my home, my castle, as we used to say; and perhaps by now it's your home and castle too. Wouldn't you say that's very nearly true, Millie?' He had given up fiddling with the gun, and was addressing himself to something even more important.

'The boys will return,' she said. 'When all the people have gone. And you'll be in endless trouble for firing that gun in any case, even though I know you did it for my sake.'

'All my guns are licensed, Millie. I'm a registered holder of firearms. And as for the boys, let them come. I want nothing better. They've won a battle. They won't win the war. They're hulking brutes, but they're still only schoolboys. Look at this.' Uncle Stephen displayed the mess on his hands and combat suit.

'We shan't feel the same about the house ever again, Uncle Stephen. You must know that.'

'If we were all to let ideas of that kind govern our lives, we'd all be homeless.' Uncle Stephen sat back on the semi-dismantled gun. 'You mustn't suppose, girl, that I don't know what you mean. It's simply that not one thing in life is ever gained by running away. This is our home, yours and mine, and here we stay.'

'I'm afraid of the boys coming back,' said Millie. 'I'm terrified.'

The big lights were being turned out, one after another. It is often noticeable that they are in use only for a few minutes. By now Millie was unsure whether she preferred the crude glare or the deep darkness.

Someone was hammering at the front door. It was of course inevitable, sooner or later. Probably it had been going on at a lesser intensity for some time.

Millie dropped down the attic ladder and flitted through the dark house like a noctambule. She was not going to wait for any nonsense from Uncle Stephen about taking no notice. All the same, at the foot of the stairs she stood and called out. After all, it might conceivably be the boys.

'Who's there?' In the hall, the trophies were s.h.a.ggy as a tropical forest.

'I'm a police officer, madam. Kindly open the door.'

She knew the voice. She slipped the chain and drew the big bolts in a trice.

'We're old friends, officer.'

All the same, he showed his card, and said, 'Detective-Sergeant Meadowsweet.' Millie smiled. 'May we have some light on the scene, madam?'

'Would that be safe?'

'Safe as could be, madam. The two men have been sighted miles away, and we're closing in steadily.'

'Oh!' gasped Millie. 'So you know?'

'Of course we know, madam. What else did you think we were doing here. Now, I just want you to tell me all that's taken place. After that, I must have a word with the gentleman upstairs who's been treating himself to a little pistol practice.'

'I hope he's not done any damage.'

'No particular damage that we know of, but that's more by luck than judgement, wouldn't you say?'

'He's got all the necessary licences.'

'We know that, madam, but he happens not to have a licence to fire at intruders, because no such licence exists. Jobs of that kind must be left to the police. It sometimes causes hards.h.i.+p, but it's the law, and a gentleman with all those different licences knows better than most what they permit him to do and what not.'

'Perhaps I should say,' put in Millie, 'that the gentleman's my uncle. He kindly took me in after the trouble we had a year ago. A little more than a year, actually.'

'I could see at the time that your husband wasn't much help,' said Detective-Sergeant Meadowsweet in his inimitable way; and then duly added, 'If you don't mind my saying so, madam.'

'Oh no, I don't mind,' said Millie. 'Phineas was utterly wet from first to last. The whole thing was the biggest mistake I ever made. Not that "mistake" is quite a strong enough word. But do sit down, Sergeant.'

'I take it,' said the Detective-Sergeant as he did so, 'that the two men were attempting to force an entrance? Tonight, I mean.'

'They're really only boys,' said Millie, 'absurd though it seems.'

'I don't think we need to go over that ground again, madam. If you remember, we covered it fully when Mr. Morke was there. So the two of them were attempting to force an entrance?'

'Well, not exactly, as I have to admit. What happened was simply that I saw one of them out on the lawn and rather lost my head. You know what they look like, Sergeant? How enormous they are?'

'Yes, we know very well, madam. Don't you worry about that. The approved school couldn't hold them for a week. The Tower of London would be more the thing, I'd say. So what happened then?'

'They're so strong too. I admit that I'm frightened to think about it. But of course you know about that too.'

The Sergeant nodded. He had settled himself on a big black stool from somewhere in French West Africa. Millie had been given to understand that, before the French came, the potentate whose official seat it had been (perhaps even throne) had at times waded through blood almost to the knees. She had difficulty in remembering which of the different regions the different things came from; especially as Uncle Stephen had s.h.i.+fted in mid-career from the fairly Far East to Africa, and then back to the East. The legs of the stool were decorated with small projecting bones and teeth, inserted into the woodwork. Above the Detective-Sergeant's head flapped a faded rushwork curtain originally intended, Uncle Stephen had said, to deter the flesh-eating birds and bats from entering one's room during the night.

'So what happened then, madam?'

'I admit that I completely lost my head, and ran in to my uncle, who took steps to defend me. No more than that.'

Another voice broke in. 'I take full responsibility, officer.'

Uncle Stephen had appeared at the top of the stairs. He had changed into his usual sharply pressed trousers and camel-hair jacket. 'The situation was extremely menacing. I was protecting my own flesh and blood against a couple of thugs.'

'Yes, sir, they're a nasty enough pair, according to all the evidence. The police are fed to the teeth with them, I can tell you that.'

'Very good of you to confirm what I say, officer. I am sorry I had to take the law into my own hands, but you'll agree that I had every justification. I've spent most of my life in places where you have to think quickly the whole time, or you find yourself dead. Worse than dead. May I suggest that we say no more about it? Let me give you a stiff whisky before you go?'

'We're not supposed to drink while we're on duty, sir.'

'Of course not,' said Uncle Stephen. 'I have served with the police myself. In several different parts of the globe.'

A little later, when the three of them were sitting amicably together, Millie began to feel intensely sad.

'I cannot help feeling partially responsible,' she blurted out. 'Do you think, Sergeant, there's anything to be done? Anything, even in theory, that I could do? Any possibility?'

At once Uncle Stephen shouted out, 'Clap them in irons, I should hope. Use straitjackets, if necessary. Though you'd have to have them specially made big enough. And then you've got to lay hold of the boys first. Eh, officer? They won the first round against me, you know.'

'We'll manage that all right, sir,' replied Detective-Sergeant Meadowsweet. 'The police don't fancy having the mickey taken out of them by two overgrown kids. Which is what you and Mr. Morke both said they were, madam.'

'But what can be done then?' persisted Millie, though somewhat against the grain, as she was perfectly well, although confusedly, aware. 'Is there anything that I could do?'

'All I am permitted to say is that it will then be a matter for the proper authorities.' The Detective-Sergeant thought for a few seconds and, in his characteristic way, he added, 'I wish them the best of British luck with it.'

Unfortunately, it soon proved that the Detective-Sergeant had been mistaken at the precise point where he had shown most confidence: his conviction that Angus and Rodney would be finally apprehended in virtually no time.

A week pa.s.sed and there was no hint or rumour of an arrest. On the other hand, Uncle Stephen had no further trouble with the authorities. There were questions at the next two Parish Council meetings, but nothing was permitted to come out of them. As for the two young giants themselves, they appeared to have gone into hiding, difficult though that must have been; or perhaps it was that they were pa.s.sing almost unnoticed amidst the freaks and zanies that people urban and suburban areas in the later part of the twentieth century. Millie, however, remembering the pair, found that hard to believe; and s.h.i.+vered when recollection fell for a while into full focus.

None the less, she had begun to go out once more: shopping, visiting the library, even attending a lecture on Criminology by an Austrian refugee. Uncle Stephen was fiercely opposed to all these excursions, and, to please him (as she would have expressed it to a confidante), she gave two undertakings: that she would never be parted from a tiny gun he lent her; and that for any longer journey she would take his car and not lightly step out of it or turn off the engine. Before she was married, Millie had driven all the time. Uncle Stephen's car was a beautiful old Alvis. Millie loved m.u.f.fling herself up in order to drive it; and it had the advantage that then she was not easily identifiable. The gun went into the pocket of her jeans, where it was no more noticeable than a compact. It fired special tiny bullets which, as Uncle Stephen confided, were, strictly speaking, illegal: a steady stream of them, if necessary; and it fired them almost silently. Uncle Stephen was at his best when instructing Millie on mid-week mornings in the small orchard.

These things were advances, and Millie had no doubt about how much Uncle Stephen loved and needed her; but the whole thing amounted to little more than a half-life, when all was said and done. Millie had no very precise idea of what the other half might consist in, still less of how best to go after it; but she missed it none the less, as people do. In the end, she decided finally that there was no sensible alternative to a further consultation with Thelma Modelle.

She had, of course, been aware of this for some time, and had continued to dream about Thelma quite frequently, but it meant returning to the other suburb, the suburb where she had lived for years with Phineas and the boys; so that she had hesitated and hesitated. Uncle Stephen would have had a fit if he had known what she was proposing.

Then one morning it became unbearable, as things suddenly do. It was a premonition or other compulsion.

She tied up her hair in a dark-green scarf, donned heavy-duty garments, and tucked in the ends of her knotted, paler green m.u.f.fler; all without a word to Uncle Stephen except to the effect that she wanted some different air and would very likely die without it. It was not a very gracious thing to say but it was essential to seem adamant.

'Drive fast,' said Uncle Stephen anxiously. 'Never slow down unless you absolutely have to. And be ready for anything.'

She knew by now what that meant.

'Of course, Uncle Stephen,' she said. 'I'll be fine.'

'I ought by rights to come with you, and look after you, but it's not safe to leave the house on its own. You know how it is, Millie.'

'I know.'

'Luckily, I went over the car this morning while you were sleeping. She'll go like the wind. See to it that she does. There's a girl.'

'That's what I'm going to do.' She was tying an eau-de-Nil silk scarf round the lower part of her face.

'Goodbye, my sweet.'

Through the tight scarf, Uncle Stephen kissed her lips.

She roared away, but really there was a traffic light round the first bend, and always it was red. Uncle Stephen must have known that even better than she knew it.

None the less, she had a perfectly authentic disinclination to linger; and as the other suburb came nearer, one of her hands dropped half-consciously from the wheel and rested for longer and longer periods upon the rea.s.suring object in her pocket.

The Parade, once again; the Lavender Bag; the fish shop! The fish shop was now even more diversified in its wares than when she had seen it last: now there was hardly a fish in sight. Millie felt no nostalgia; nothing but nausea.

She brought the Alvis to rest as un.o.btrusively as possible with such a machine and darted upstairs in her full rig. She had no more made an appointment than on the previous occasion.

But this time the visionary did not greet her upon the landing, and the door of the sanctum, once the rheumatism lady's little sitting room, was shut.

Millie hesitated for some time. After all, she was presumably hidden from observation, and could give a moment or two to thinking and deciding. Most probably, Thelma's practice had grown since those first days, so that by now a client would have to be specially fitted in. Alternatively, Thelma might have failed and gone. Or gone, anyway. Communities are full of neat or braggart labels referring to vanished enterprises.

Millie timidly tapped.

'What is it?' The voice was Thelma's.

How could Millie explain? It was best to open and enter.

Thelma sat on the floor by the rheumatism lady's miniature gas fire. The black table, with its attendant black chairs, had been pushed into a corner. The zodiacal wall cards hung at madder angles than ever. Thelma herself wore what looked like the same green jeans, though they also looked a year and more older; and a battle-dress tunic, dyed dark blue by the authorities. It could be deduced that business was less than brisk.

'Oh, it's you.'

Thelma did not get up, and this time it was Millie who stood.

'Yes, it's me. I want to know what's happening now. Exactly, please. What's happening at this very moment, if possible.'

'Well, in that case you'd better shut the door.'

Millie complied. She perceived that she should have done it in the first place. At least Thelma had not specifically demurred.

'And you'd better take off your clothes.'

'Some of them,' said Millie, smiling.

She had unwound the silk scarf from her face before entering. Now she climbed out of the heavy-duty garments and threw them on the floor, where they lay like prehistoric monsters, alive or dead, as the case might be. The rheumatism lady had presumably arranged to take away her carpets since Millie had last been there, because now the boards were bare. They were also mottled, but that happens soon and mysteriously in almost any house.

'Leave that,' said Thelma sharply, as Millie was about to unwind the dark green scarf which confined her locks.

Millie desisted. Her brow was moist.

'Take off your sweater if you're too hot,' said Thelma.

Millie shook her head.

'This time I shall need your money,' said Thelma. 'You can't depend entirely on my good will. I might need a new dress. Have you thought of that?'

'How much money?' asked Millie, still on her feet.

'How much have you got with you?'

'Can't you see without asking me?'

'Yes,' said Thelma. 'Forty pounds in fivers, and ten single pounds. You must want to know badly.'

'I do,' said Millie calmly. For some reason, Thelma, no matter what her words or deeds, never upset her, as so many people did, even when saying or doing very little. Thelma was like Uncle Stephen in that.

'I'll take forty-nine pounds of it. You may need a pound suddenly when you leave.' Millie had noticed before that Thelma was surprisingly well-spoken in her own way.

'Only if you tell me what I've asked you to tell me and tell me the truth and the whole truth.'

Thelma shot Millie a confusing glance. Though intense, it was not necessarily hostile.

Then she arose from the floor and drew the curtains across the single window. They were not the rheumatism lady's pretty chintz, but heavy, dun, and unshaped. As they were touched and moved, they smelt. It was as if old clothes were being draped before the fairy windows of a wagon.