LITMIR.BIZ

       A TOOTHBRUSH

      H.R.F. Keating

      Henry Tailor, assistant inspector in the Small Branches Division of mighty H.J. Manifold’s, arrived late at his house in sweetly suburban Harrow-on-the-Hill. Victim of the hospitality of the over-anxious manager of the Bedford branch, he had missed, by a minute, his train back. He had had then to sit for a whole hour in the station waiting room, thinking how much nicer it would be to be looking down at his Alice, his quiet little wife of three years, an early-to-bedder if ever there was, as she lay innocently asleep.

      Home at last, totally weary, when he did stand there beside her he found himself in a dilemma. Go to the bathroom and get rid of any trace of alcohol on his breath – Alice hated it – by quickly brushing his teeth? Or, forgetting his toothbrush, the green one, side by side in the mug with Alice’s pink one, put his clothes neatly on his chair, slip his pyjamas from under his pillow and just slide in beside her as she slept on?

      Modest intake of wine still coursing through his veins, he finally decided. Be a devil. Alice will never know.

      But next morning, leaving Alice still snugly there for her few extra minutes, as he stepped into the bathroom he saw at once, in the familiar scratched blue plastic mug on the shelf above the basin, a totally alien toothbrush.

      It came as a shock. As if … As if, he was to say afterwards, it had been left there by a real alien, a little man from Mars. In a moment, of course, various explanations occurred to him, likely or unlikely. The likeliest – he could not even think the brush might belong to someone Alice had invited in – was that she had bought herself a new one. But that, in fact, was not at all likely. For one thing he was almost sure she had acquired her pink-handled brush only a month or so ago – she had always said it was better to have a different colour from his – and in any case the alien brush was not at all like anything Alice would ever buy.

      No, this brush, the alien one, was, well – alien. It had a very broad long white handle, looking something like a spatula. Its head, too, was large, larger than that on any toothbrush he had ever seen, and its bristles, thick, and somehow aggressive, were noticeably longer than the ones on Alice’s or his own.

      He wanted, and did not want, to touch it, to pick the thing up and examine it more carefully. But in the end, after taking his shower, thinking hard the while, all he did was delicately to extract his green brush from the scratched old mug, use it, more hastily than usual, and slip it back into the mug close beside Alice’s, almost touching in fact. Then, standing rather far back from the mirror, he started his razor buzzing.

      But, dressing finished, just as Alice stirred he made a sudden dash into the bathroom again and – he did not really know why – snatched up the alien thing, stood for just one moment looking at it, and then stuffed it – it was quite dry – into the inner pocket of his jacket next to his wallet.

      Sitting in the kitchen over his two quick cups of tea and one thick slice of toast and marmalade, with Alice opposite in her pink-roses housecoat – her library job did not start till ten – he managed to slant his tentative inquiries about how she had spent the time while he had been in Bedford into the subject of shopping. Then, when this produced nothing, he asked whether she had remembered to renew … Not, absolutely not, her quite new toothbrush but, randomly hit on, the half-empty jar of marmalade.

      ‘No,’ Alice said, in her usual neatly efficient manner, ‘if we’re careful we won’t need more till we go for the big shop on Saturday.’

      Henry would have liked to have tried some other approach. Each time he thought about that wide, gleaming white toothbrush he had seen planted between the two of theirs in the mug, he felt a dart of disquiet. But time was getting on, and he was never, except when there was a strike on the Underground, late for work.

      So he swallowed the last of his tea, folded his napkin, put it in its ring and went to collect his briefcase from its place in the hall, calling out his customary ‘Goodbye, darling, see you about six.’

      Then, as he closed the hall door, as usual firmly, a new thought struck him.

      He hauled his key from his trouser pocket, the right-hand one of course, handkerchief always in the left, slid it into the Yale, opened the door, and, shouting out the first thing that came to mind, ‘Forgotten something’, he thrust his head into the sitting room, glanced rapidly round – windows all intact, latches in place – before running upstairs, heedless now of any noise he might make, and taking an equally quick survey of the windows there.

      Yes, each one properly closed, as Alice always made sure they were before going to bed. So, how …? But no time to think about that now.

      ‘Got it,’ he called out (What can I say it is, if Alice …?) and in a minute he was striding down the road towards the station, briefcase swinging from his hand.

      At his desk in Manifold House he found it hard to concentrate on his report on the Bedford branch. The thought of the alien toothbrush kept flicking up in his mind, like a colour TV ad during an old black-and-white film, momentarily startling and then back to the monotone world of yesteryear. But the puzzle of that mysterious arrival in the scratched old plastic mug seemed to be without any practical answer. Earlier in the train, when in putting his wallet

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