LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER I

      MR BOWLING sat at the piano until it grew darker and darker, not playing, but with Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto in D Flat Minor opened before him at the first movement, rubbing his hands nervously, and staring across the shadowy room to the window, to see if it was dark enough yet. The window was wide open, and at first the evening was a kind of green, such as you would expect in a London summer, then it got grey, then it got muddy brown; then it turned black and safe. It was not that he was going to do anything very special, but he got into moods when he didn’t care to talk to people. In just the same way, he often got into desperately lonely moods; moods which might have been called suicidal, had he not been a man incapable of committing suicide, for he had too much of a sense of humour for such a cold and deliberate act. He went quietly past the little telephone cupboard, paused outside his door and listened. Then he stole past the two doors and the thin staircase which led to the top floor, taking the broader staircase down to the second, and then the first floor. He passed various doors on the ground floor and slipped out into the square and was soon in Notting Hill Gate. In his public school accent, he asked for an Evening Standard. When there wasn’t one left, he said he would take anything, he didn’t care, on this occasion, what the paper was. It wasn’t war news he was after, he had put the war out of his mind, so far as it was possible. He was bored with war and felt entitled to be. You could regard it as peace time if you liked, if you had a good imagination. He stumbled along in the blackout to the Coach and Horses, where it was cheery, and where one of the barmaids wasn’t too bad, though seeing her made him decide once again: ‘I’ll never kill a woman again! Not on your life! Things happen you don’t expect!’ All the same, he’d had to do it, it was a Heaven-sent chance. There was something about the bachelor feeling, after those dreadful years, that dreadful woman, poor thing, whatever you do, don’t marry too young. He ordered a large whisky, two shillings, but who cared, drank it neat and ordered a pint of Burton and Mild, made a few mumbling remarks and gave his quick, head-jerking expression, like a polite man not really listening, and went along to the sandwich counter. He ordered soup and some ham sandwiches and started in at his paper. He peered all over it, up and down and round about. There was nothing. It was all right. There was nothing at all. He had another look, saw a Standard discarded on a seat, pinched it and looked all through it, and set to at his sandwiches. He tossed back his beer in two gusts. There was the shadow of him on the white wall. His head going back, his thick hands holding the tankard, his blue jacket rather solid. His second murder, and he’d got away with it. Perhaps the body had been found, and perhaps it was in the morgue, but there was nothing whatever about Mr Watson in the papers, after three whole days. He ate his sandwiches and soup together, sipping at the brown soup, and then biting at a sandwich. Then he ordered some more beer, he liked beer, though it gave him a bit of a pot belly. Then he ordered a cigar. He paid one-and-six for it. Then he went out and fumbled along up the hill to the pub he liked called The Windsor Castle. He liked the public bar there, it was like a country pub, there were benches and two lots of darts going on. He sat and had a bit of a think. He got a glimpse of himself in the mirror there and thought: ‘Well, I dunno, I think I look rather decent.’

      Across the bar, a girl sat with a soldier and said about Mr Bowling: ‘There’s that man who often comes in here. Doesn’t he look awful? There’s something about him.’

      But over in Ebury Street, Victoria, the crowd thought he was marvellous. Queenie often said: ‘Oh Lor’, I’m fed up, let’s ring up poor old Bill! He’ll cheer us up, and at least he’s a gentleman!’ She’d get busy dialling Park 4796. She did it now and the others sat around with the Watney bottles. ‘Hallo? Oh, could I speak to Mr Bowling, please? Is it a trouble?’ Only, sometimes one of the other tenants answered the telephone, instead of the maid, thinking it was for them most likely, and they got snooty when it wasn’t for them. ‘He’s out,’ they’d say without going to knock.

      ‘I wonder if you could be so kind as to give him a message when he comes in? It’s Queenie Martin, he’ll know. We’d love him to come over?’

      … Stumbling back from The Windsor Castle, Mr Bowling went in to Number Forty and hurried up to his room. He was just beginning to feel pretty good. Regular practice during the blitz had given him a pretty good head, and all that subsequently boring time in the Ambulance Service, until he got himself invalided out with his queer heart, so it needed a good deal now to feel really good. He told himself he felt perky. He was just beginning to get the feeling of being a bachelor again, and living alone in a room in the old way which he so used to hate. A man married for reasons of loneliness, and so as to make love regularly, in his view, more often than for any other reason. Sometimes, if he was lucky, for money. If he was really lucky, he married for love. But there, some people had the luck, others didn’t. He put on the light and sat on the divan thinking: ‘I expect I look rather nice, sitting here, rather a quiet sort of chap, sad.’ He smiled in the way he would have smiled had someone been watching who was prepared to say: ‘Poor old Bill! There, there! There, there!’ He started to have a little cry. He cried into his thick hands. There were so many reasons for those tears, they started so very long ago. He thought: ‘I’m not a sinner at all, really. No worse than the next chap. I’d help anyone. I jolly soon started in at war work. It was partly the change, we all like change, and I got fed up with insurance. I never thought of this new line, not then. Not until we got a direct hit and we got buried, and she started up that awful screaming. And I put my hand on her mouth, close to her nose. My, she went out quickly, like a snuffed candle. It was only murder if you analysed it. There were worse things. Blackmail was worse. Homosexuality was worse. Who said murder was the only capital crime? It wasn’t so in the old days. You got stoned to death for all sorts of things. Poor old girl, but she was a cow, a real cow, what a cow she was. Poor old dear. And if it hadn’t been me, it might have been the roof falling in. Who could tell? Anyway, it’s between me and my God.’ And he thought: ‘And for the first time, I got a bit of money out of something! Insurance! I’d never even thought of that!’

      The maid had done the pink curtains and the blackout. He was moving to the piano when he saw the note under the door. Queenie. May as well go over, she might have some gin. He got his bowler hat again and lost no time in going out and across to the District Railway. He found Queenie and the crowd full of larks, all the Services represented, military and civil defence, and hardly room to breathe. ‘Struth,’ he said in his public school accent. ‘No air at all! I shall pass out!’

      ‘You pass out,’ Queenie said. ‘Here, dear, have some gin. I saved it.’ Queenie’s husband was tight and lay on the bed. He was a very boring man who had a job in the M.O.I. They all looked like him up there.

      There were a pair of twins, kids in the A.T.S.

      Mr Bowling thought:

      ‘I wonder what this crowd would think if they knew.’

      And he thought:

      ‘Perhaps they will know soon. I’m doing my level best.’

      But perhaps this train of thought was the gin.