Death Lives Next Door - Gwendoline Butler

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would they have said, she wondered, if they knew the real cause for her silence? She was silent because there was practically nothing she could say. She could never speak professionally again about her old subject: she had forgotten everything she knew. When she came round to life again after her husband’s death she had found that all her knowledge, all her carefully acquired techniques had been erased from her mind. Six years of work had gone in a few hours. She was not only ignorant, she was worse than ignorant, her mind blocked all further studies on this subject. Marion knew when to take a hint from the Gods; she rebuilt her life on different foundations.

      But it was not a story she wanted her sober, realistic, feet-on-the-ground companions to know.

      Down in the kitchen below Marion’s sitting-room Joyo was also watching the man from the window. She was as aware of his presence as Marion, but in a different kind of way. But Joyo was a different sort of person. She was small and sturdy and given to wearing bright peasant clothes. Joyo was not her real name, of course, but one she had adopted in defence against her real one, about which she preferred not to think; she had got it as a matter of fact from a gay Australian in the canteen where she had worked during the war. The war had been Joyo’s apogee, frankly she had never had it so good again. The laughter, and the crowding together, and the tension, even the danger, had suited her. She had been out, free. And then, the war over, back she was obliged to pop like Cinderella. She had a gay volatile temperament, although in her bad moods or when her head ached it was as well to keep out of her way.

      But it was a bright cheerful face which stared from the window now. She was passionately interested in the Watcher, and unlike Marion would have liked to have asked him into the house. But being more worldly than Marion she could also see the danger.

      She moved across the kitchen idly picking up a bit of pastry off the cinnamon apple tart as she passed, and then suddenly doing a little dance in the middle of the kitchen, just because the floor was bare and sunny. She looked at her face in the mirror. The bright orange lipstick which had so captivated her in the advertisements shone on her lips. Joyo kept a supply of make-up in the kitchen cupboard in a box labelled Oxo. It made her feel gay when the world was dull. It was a little secret she kept from Marion, although privately she thought Marion must be pretty slow not to have discovered it. She poked at her treasures, lipsticks, nail varnish, powder and scent. There was also a photograph in there which she studied with interest. It was not of anyone she was fond of, or indeed of anyone she had ever known, but it had won a money prize for her and Joyo, who was a frugal soul, appreciated that. She tucked the money into her purse. She dabbed a little scent behind her ears before going to look in the oven. She would have liked to have her hair dyed that deep mauve she so much admired, but she feared that it might embarrass Marion, not that Marion and Joyo always saw eye to eye by any means, but they had lived together for so long now that Joyo had learnt how far she could go.

      Joyo looked wistfully at the coalman delivering coal next door but one. She fancied she knew his face. He turned, and she was quite sure: she had seen him at the little café down by the station where they played music and where she enjoyed herself so much when she got the chance. She had been there last Wednesday and unless she was much mistaken so had the coalman. He looked cleaner, of course (not so much cleaner as the honesty which lay close to the surface in Joyo obliged her to say), and he looked happier. Indeed he had been very happy dancing the cha-cha to a tune which had set Joyo’s feet tapping. She regretted that she had not been dancing herself but her companion at the time, a morose man from Manchester that she had met on the railway station, had not, as he himself put it, been much of a dancer. Joyo would never see him again and she did not care. She liked men and their company but she tried, as far as possible, to avoid permanent relationships. She would not, in any case, have wanted to know the Mancunian any longer. He had been tactless.

      “You don’t want to dance that sort of thing, my dear,” he had said, patting her hand, “not at our age.”

      One offence: for Joyo did not care to be touched unless she said. Double offence: he was at least ten years older than Joyo. So she moved her hand hastily away and upset a cup of coffee over him. It was one of those things that Joyo could never be quite sure she had done on purpose or not. The coffee did him no harm so far as Joyo could see, but it had an immediate and savage effect upon his emotions. From a nice, polite, quiet if boring man who was just buying Joyo a friendly cup of coffee while he waited for his train, he was transformed into a loud talker and hard knee-gripper. Poor Joyo was horrified and at once began to think of ways to keep his voice and his hand down; she was experienced and worldly enough to recognise that it was for her to cope. Sadly she recalled the man in Bow who had climbed up the window curtains and the man in Southend who had crawled under the table. Neurotics seemed to be her lot.

      Fortunately the stain of coffee on the cloth, long and boot-shaped, reminded him of Italy, and Italy of the Battle of Cassino.

      “Here was us,” he said, sprinkling sugar in a circle lavishly round the table. “Here were the Jerries,” and a large amount of salt went down. “Here’s the mountain,” and he staggered over with the coffee urn, then to Joyo’s horror began to look around for the Benedictine Monastery. There was a bottle of Benedictine on a shelf within his reach and his hand stretched out for it. “Here we are,” he said cheerfully, “very suitable.” And the bottle went on top of the coffee urn. Joyo was heartily glad that the proprietor was on the telephone, and got to her feet with a view to slipping out.

      Unluckily the coalman, who had finished his dancing, had also been at the Battle of Cassino.

      “Here,” he said. “Here, chum, you’ve got it all wrong. We were here.” He sugared yet another area of the cloth. “And the Jerries were here.” This time he used pepper and Joyo at once began to sneeze loudly.

      “Naw,” said a third man also coming over. “That’s not right. What you want …”

      “Were you there?”

      “Naw,” said the man, “never left England, not me. In a reserved occupation. But I’ve been watching Monty on television, see. He ought to know. You’ve got the monastery in the wrong place … It was lower down.”

      Joyo was desperately embarrassed, and tried to look as though she had nothing to do with them, but they would not let her get away with this, and pressed her into service to stand between them as the Tenth German Army Group. A dangerous thing to be she began to feel as it looked as though the believer in the Up Monastery and the believer in the Down Monastery might come to blows over this issue before they could fight out the battle proper.

      “You don’t know nothing about it,” sneered the coalman, rapidly seizing the bottle of Benedictine. “Everyone knows the ruddy old monastery was at the top. That’s what the battle was about.” As he spoke his fingers were quickly but almost absently undoing the bottle. He sniffed. “Only a dummy,” he said, disappointed.

      Joyo was under the table by this time, hoping that no one would notice her, but as she was still sneezing she was afraid they might. But the disappointment over the bottle, in which all three seemed to share, reconciled them and they sat down and began to talk over the Italian campaign. No one took any more notice of Joyo and after a bit she crept out from under the table and went home. But she saw the proprietor emerge fiercely as she left. It might be as well, reflected Joyo, to keep out of the Mocha Mecca for some time. Besides, she had a small memento of the Mecca in her pocket.

      The coalman finished his job and the van moved off. It was easier now for Joyo to see across the road.

      Yes, the watcher was still there. What was he doing? What was he doing in Marion’s life? She felt sure he had come to see Marion. She felt a little premonitory thrill of terror.

      And from her kitchen window she could see, what Ezra could not see, that Rachel was lurking in the corner between the house and high wall.

      Someone had once called Rachel the girl who knows everybody and there was a lot of truth in this. Rachel was

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