The Suburbs of Hell Read online

  She went back to her chair, sipped at her tea, and found it cold. ‘Greg, I don’t like to think of you being alone here. I’d even rather you went on staying at the Speedwell, though it must be so noisy.’

  ‘I didn’t mind,’ he said. ‘I liked the noise. I hope I didn’t hurt the feelings of all the kind people, like the Commander, who wanted to put me up. But I really felt better upstairs in a noisy pub.’

  ‘But tonight,’ she said; ‘won’t you let me ask Harry Ufford to come and spend the night? Or you could go to him. He has a room where he often puts up a friend, usually some man waiting for his divorce to come through.’

  ‘I’d better get used to it,’ Greg said. ‘I’m going to get used to it. Some day I’ll go upstairs again, but it won’t be today or tomorrow.’

  ‘Well, I’m a little worry-guts, I am,’ said Ena. ‘My old uncle used to say so. He had a ’tache like yours. I never thought I should see them become the fashion with young fellas. I wish you’d listen to me, Greg.’

  ‘You don’t imagine,’ said the young man, gazing at her, ‘that there’d be any danger to me? There wasn’t any reason for it. It was like being struck like lightning. I’m probably safer in this house than you are in yours.’

  ‘Well, I don’t know, I’m sure,’ said Ena, unhappily. ‘In an old town like this there are funny old things that you forget about. It was only a year or two ago that two labourers came walking into the New Moon out of the cellars. Arthur asked them pretty sharply what they’d been doing there, and they said that they’d walked there from the High Street, from the cellar of an old house they were demolishing. Something to do with the smuggling days, everyone said.’

  ‘You don’t think,’ Greg said, staring at her, ‘that he got in that way? No, you’re romancing, Ena. The police have been in the cellars. A fine-tooth comb wasn’t in it. And they asked me if I’d unlocked the back door. So that was how he got in.’

  Ena stood up and began to pile the supper-things on her tray. ‘Yes, I’m sure you’re right,’ she said. ‘I’m being silly. Funny how that story about the New Moon cellars came into my head all of a sudden. Something like this changes you, somehow. When you think of your house, normally, you think of doors and windows that lock and walls that are solid. But suddenly you find yourself thinking about windowpanes that break and bolts that don’t hold and smugglers’ tunnels into the cellar. Do you know, you’ve got your brother’s eyes, exactly.’

  The young man leaned back in his chair and began to laugh a little, thin chest moving under the tee-shirt with the outline of a whale. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘You’re cunning. I’m a quivering heap. Where would this Harry sleep?’

  ‘Not “this Harry”,’ Ena objected. ‘He’d be hurt if he thought you didn’t remember him, though he’d understand why. He was a great friend of Paul’s. Oh, he could sleep anywhere, the way he’s lived. On this table—why not?’

  ‘Am I a gibbering coward?’ Greg wondered. ‘Maybe. But I do remember Harry—yes, of course I do—and I’d like to have him about, so long as I don’t have to talk to him.’

  ‘He’ll take a hint from me,’ said Ena. ‘When I’ve washed up I shall go and find him.’

  ‘Ena,’ the young man said, and put out an arm and clasped her as she reached for his cup and saucer. He nuzzled her soft plump cheek, level with his own as he sat. ‘Bless you, Ena.’

  ‘Oh, isn’t he a big strong fella,’ cried Ena. ‘There, there. Oh, but we shall have to do something about that hair, it’s only fit to wipe your boots on.’

  The New Moon was probably the most ancient of the surviving Old Tornwich pubs, and had been the grandest: a rambling coaching-inn which had been overthrown in the revolution of the railway, so that in time the outbuildings of the wide yard in the shadow of the church spire had been whittled away, leaving behind half-ruinous walls of mellow red brick pressed against by self-sown elder. Internally, too, it had diminished, its clientele of fishermen and other such people in wellies imposing on it a certain surface with which they felt at home. The landlord, equally at home, changed nothing; so that, in the bars, finely worked beams fit for a gentleman’s parlour looked down on a mysterious floor-covering which could once have been sodden cornflakes.

  Harry came across the moonlit yard and pushed at the back door, which at first resisted, then gave with an angry judder. Men mostly in dark blue, many with knitted caps, many with beards, turned to see who he was, and he waved a casual hand to the room as he ambled on to the bar. He said to the landlord, who had his glasses on and was reading the News of the World with a bleak, unenjoying expression: ‘Evenin, Arthur.’

  The landlord put paper and glasses to one side, looking glad to be rid of them. ‘Nothing but sex and murder,’ he said, in a mild old-man’s voice. ‘You can’t escape. I was sick to death of the Yorkshire Ripper from the start. I don’t know why everyone who comes in here is so fascinated by people killing each other. Or themselves. Morbid lot. They come in here bursting with news: “Did you hear about old Bert, he’s topped himself.” Sorry, Harry. You’re just the same, now I think of it.’

  ‘Snakey old bugger you are,’ Harry said, ‘blackenin my character to my face. Arthur, did Frank get in? I got a message he was lookin for me.’

  ‘Frank De Vere?’ Arthur said, unenthusiastically. ‘He’s in the next room, sitting by the stove, with young Dave. Guess what they’re talking about.’

  ‘I can, tonight,’ Harry said. ‘That puzzle my head sometimes.’

  ‘Someone else left a message,’ Arthur remembered. ‘Ena came in looking for you. Said could you give her a look at the lighthouse, soon.’

  ‘Oh-ah. Well, I don’t need a pint then. I’ll just find out what Frank want.’

  He went up a couple of steps to the front bar, as bare and bleak as the back one, and saw Frank De Vere and a younger man seated on either side of an old iron stove, heads bent on quiet talk. In one of his almost automatic gestures of camaraderie he put a hand on Frank’s shoulder, and Frank stiffened and jerked about, with a hostile look on his acne-pitted face for just a moment.

  ‘Evening, Harry,’ he said, relaxing. ‘We were looking for you.’

  ‘I heard,’ Harry said, and nodded at the young man, who had a glossy black beard and a gold stud in one earlobe. ‘Evenin, Dave. You’re hard to find lately.’

  The dark youngster looked enquiringly at Frank, who explained: ‘I invited Harry to that hooley you said you were going to have, which you didn’t remember to turn up for.’

  ‘Oh,’ Dave said, ‘yeah. Well, sorry, Harry. I fought I’d have a house-warmin, like, but I dint get back here till late.’

  ‘What house have you got to warm?’ Harry wondered.

  Dave was a hesitant speaker, not handy with words. ‘Well, not a house, ezzackly; more a gaff, like. One of them derelict places in the High Street. You know old Fred Heaf, thass his son what inherited it, and he give me the key and said I could squat there. Thass got a reasonable roof, but I dunno—that int ideal.’

  Understanding was dawning on Harry’s craggy face.

  ‘What Dave’s trying to say,’ explained Frank, ‘is, he’s shitting himself. The street door locks, but that’s all that does. He thinks someone’s going to shoot him while he’s asleep. He’s been sleeping away from Tornwich every night since last Sunday.’

  ‘Yeh?’ said Harry, neutrally.

  ‘Frank and me fought,’ Dave said, making heavy weather of it, ‘that you bein a mate of the old man’s—’

  Harry nodded. It was not the first time that Dave’s drowned fisherman father had been put to use.

  ‘– and you havin that room where Frank was livin, and Bob, and Mick, well, p’rhaps you could put me up for a bit. I mean, that wouldn’t be for long, and I’d pay you rent.’

  ‘You would and all,’ said Harry genially.

  ‘I mean, I can’t goo to Frank’s because Linda—you know?’

  ‘Depression,’ Frank translated.

  ‘So I int got a pla
ce,’ Dave concluded, with relief.

  Harry stood considering, fingering his lower lip.

  ‘Well, don’t just tower over us, boy,’ Frank said, ‘sit down and have a drink. Which Dave will bring.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ Harry said, fending off the idea with both hands. ‘I’ve got a visit to make. Yes, all right, Dave. Just for a week or two. But I’d rather you dint come tonight. Get Frank to sleep with you, bein as you’re such mates.’

  The face behind the black beard looked boyishly relieved. ‘You’re a magic man, Harry. Fanks a lot. That don’t matter about tonight. One more night there won’t kill me.’

  ‘Don’t you goo jumpin to conclusions, boy,’ said Harry, with a return of his normal social manner. ‘Right, then: you come tomorrow with your gear about six o’clock time. I think that beard suit you. Funny what a proper black beard can do for a boy whass still wet behind the ears. Mine was always sort of gingery, for some reason.’

  ‘Let me buy you a short, at least,’ Dave said, getting up.

  But Harry repelled the offer again with his tattooed hands. ‘No, boy,’ he said, ‘no. I’m now offt, I’ve got a randy-voo. Frank—guard him with your life.’

  Frank, still seated, had been glancing at him now and again with an expression which was probing, yet somehow wary. He had eyes of a cold, acidic blue. It annoyed Harry, that measuring look, and he returned it, and Frank picked up his beer and measured that instead.

  ‘See you,’ Harry said, in no very friendly tone, and swung round and went out through the back bar, giving the landlord a passing wave. The yard outside was bathed in fitful moonlight as black clouds were driven across the moon by a breeze which hissed and chinked over sailing-boats near at hand. The grass of the wide churchyard, and the ship-like hulk of the church with its pale-gleaming spire, whitened and dimmed by moments. A couple of the town’s few trees made a chill sound. ‘When winter come,’ said Harry to himself, huddled inside his donkey-jacket, ‘that do come.’

  He left the churchyard behind him, and passed by the houses of prosperous Georgian merchants, where bow-windows stared out over grass to a black sea. From behind him a ship hooted hollowly.

  He made a turn, and the slim grey finger of Ena’s lighthouse rose ahead, a nine-sided tower, ninety feet high, of pale brick which the sky silvered and dappled by turns. It stood in a small open place, close by where the town’s main gate had been, and looked out across the water to a point where England ended.

  He climbed the stairs which hugged the lower wall and banged on the heavy door. Faintly, through its thickness, he heard the King Charles spaniel begin to yap. Then Ena’s voice, close, called: ‘Who’s there?’

  His face against the jamb, he gave a bloodcurdling laugh. ‘Why, gal, they call me the Tornwich Monster.’ Immediately the door opened, and Ena stood there, white hair lit from behind, with disapproving black eyes under her still-black brows.

  ‘That’s the sort of silly joke we expect from you,’ she said. ‘But I didn’t think you’d have forgotten so soon who it is who’s dead.’

  He was taken aback, too far to think of excusing himself. ‘Just my way, Ena,’ he mumbled.

  ‘Well, come in,’ she said; and he followed her into the big round room which was her living-room and also kitchen, circled by the winding stone stair which led to her bedroom and upwards. The dog immediately stopped barking and came to sniff at his shoes. The place was warm with the fuggy warmth of a paraffin heater, and shadowy with an oil-lamp and a couple of candles. ‘Why the candles?’ he wondered, looking about.

  She led him towards a round table on which the lamp stood, and sat him down there by a bottle of whisky and some glasses, in the middle of the room. He looked at her from that position with a grave, apprehensive expression on his raw-boned face, making his peace after his lapse. She smiled at his contrition, and after pouring two large whiskies sat down opposite him, lifting her glass in a silent toast.

  ‘Well, why?’ he asked again. ‘Thass gloomy in here.’

  ‘Candlelight for seduction,’ Ena murmured. ‘Oh, because I’m a daft old woman and keep forgetting to pay my bills.’

  ‘Ena,’ he said, ‘you int short, are you? I mean, you on’y got to say. With this job with Marlowes I’m earnin more than I know what to do with.’

  ‘No, truly,’ Ena said. ‘I truly did just overlook it. Though I do find myself hoping, sometimes in the middle of the night, that I don’t live to be an old, old lady. However, that’s none of your business, Harry Ufford, thanks all the same.’

  He looked at her broodingly in the lamplight, then raised his glass to her. On a hulking old-fashioned sideboard behind her, awkwardly placed against the round wall, were many photographs. Her young merchant seaman husband, torpedoed in the Atlantic. Her small son in the year of his death, with the cherry lips, cerulean eyes and butter-coloured hair of a tinted studio portrait of those days.

  ‘I’m glad you came,’ she said, ‘I wanted to ask you to do something. I think someone should go and spend the night in that house with Greg.’

  He was surprised, but thought about it, lowering his eyes and biting his lip as he did when he was thinking. Absently he took out his battered tobacco tin and rolled a cigarette.

  ‘Oh, don’t say you can’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve as good as promised the poor boy.’

  ‘Yes, I can,’ he said. ‘I shall feed my cat, then goo to him. Just the one night, bein as I’ve got the day off tomorrow. Oh, guess what, Ena, I’m goonna have the pleasure of Dave Stutton’s company in my top room, because of all this. And I’d been hopin you might persuade Greg to come there. Would you credit it, here am I in my middle years playin babysitter to not one but two strappin young fellas of twenty-four.’

  ‘Well, Greg is different,’ said Ena. ‘He’s not the sort to take advantage, not like young Dave. And I wouldn’t call him “strapping”, either. I’d call him nervous, and not just because of this.’

  ‘It’s the brains,’ Harry said. ‘The brains make them high-strung.’

  ‘I’m surprised Dave doesn’t stay with Frank,’ Ena said. ‘They seem as thick as thieves.’

  ‘Yeh—don’t they,’ said Harry, meditating.

  ‘I don’t like that Frank. I think he’s creepy.’

  ‘Have you ever been in his house?’ Harry asked. ‘No, of course, you wouldn’t have. Well, I have, and thass what I thought: “creepy”. I mean, I quite like that sort of thing myself, but thass a bit over the top. I mean, all over the walls of his front-room there’s all these old guns, pistols, swords, daggers, the whole lot. About a month ago he had a social call from a young copper about something or other, and that boy was very interested. I mean, really interested, because thass an interestin collection, and I s’ppoose coppers have hobbies like other people. But he ask Frank if all the firearms was put out of action, like, and some weren’t, and Frank got a friendly warning about that, and another visit later to check up. Well, Frank’s wife—I don’t think you know her, but she’s kind of funny, nervy—she dint like that at all. She get all flustered about lettin a meter-reader into her house, so you can guess how much she fancied havin a policeman there, twice. Frank told me she wanted to put the whole lot out for the dustman, hundreds of quids worth. I don’t think that story’s over yet, so if you’re in the market for something like a blunderbuss, I’ll put in a word.’

  ‘I think that all sounds rather nasty,’ Ena said, ‘especially if his wife’s like that. But there are lots like him. Men and their toys.’

  ‘His father was in the army,’ Harry said, ‘I s’ppoose that explain it. Squaddy, I think, then NCO. Frank lived quite a lot in Germany when he was a boy. He speak German. I’ve had nights out with him in Hamburg and Bremerhaven.’

  A clock on the sideboard whirred and gave a faltering chime. ‘Oh, Harry,’ Ena exclaimed, ‘how you do go on. It’s half-past ten, and Greg thinks you’re on your way. Do make a move, because he needs all his sleep.’

  He was rising even as he emptied his
glass, and followed her to the door, the dog trailing after. From the high step they looked out on streets quite empty, on blank windows catching the intermittent moon, on slate roofs tinged blue by the same light.

  ‘So many empty houses,’ Ena mused. ‘There’s only you near, and you’ll be away tonight.’

  ‘Well, Eddystone Ena,’ said Harry, ‘you int so badly off. I’ve heard tell of lighthouses what int even on a bus-route.’

  ‘Get along with you,’ Ena said, shoving between his shoulderblades. ‘I’ll tell you what: you and Greg come here for breakfast. Promise?’

  ‘Okay,’ Harry said. ‘I’ll put it to him. Night, Ena.’ He went on down the steps with a hand on the chill railing, and heard the door of her tower bang shut against the breeze.

  …The monster

  meant to attack Heorot after the blue hour,

  when black night has settled over all—

  when shadowy shapes come shrithing

  dark beneath the clouds.

  Beowulf, tr. Kevin Crossley-Holland

  Inside, beyond the small squares of dimly lit curtains, she hovers, but busily. There are two glasses to be rinsed in a basin, a bottle to be stowed away in the sideboard. There her eyes take in the photographs, but routinely, because they are household objects of every day, not often now connected with the real people who faced self-consciously into the camera.

  The dog is sprawled by the blue-burning heater, but when she moves lifts its black and tan head to watch her.

  She looks at a plant on a window-ledge of the round room, and tests its soil with a forefinger, and does not water it.

  She returns to the table to wipe it with a yellow cloth.

  On the table is a battered tin, which she picks up, clicking her tongue. She looks towards the door, as if chiding him for his forgetfulness. The tobacco-tin is old, its paint almost removed by years of lurking in pockets. She thinks how attached men grow, especially seafaring men, to trivial objects which they can carry with them.

  The curving steps, layers of black and silver. The iron railing, almost icy now.