Silent multitude, p.6
Silent Multitude, page 6
He could think of nowhere. She looked around the precinct. She had a lot to get through and wanted to waste as little time as possible. The seats under the Library entrance would at least be out of the wind.
“Over there—you think you can walk? I’ll bet it’s as warm as toast up there in that porch thing.”
She led him up the steps and put him in a comer out of the worst of the wind. With little arranging gestures she left him there and went back for his shilling. It struck her that so far he hadn’t said a word. It’d be a very heller if he turned out to be dumb. Still a good story, but harder to handle. People hated deformity.
“Feeling better? Here’s your money. You might have been struck by lightning, the way you were standing there.”
“Yes, I do feel better, thank you. I’d had a sort of shock, you see.”
Rusty, but he did speak. Thank God for that.
“It’s frightening, this huge empty city. Don’t you think so?”
“I don’t find it frightening.” Of course he didn’t. “I know it. Very well I know it.”
“I’ve crawled over every inch of it one time or another. Bet you don’t know it as well as me.”
“Crawled? I can’s say as I have actually crawled, but-”
“Well, not exactly crawled. But you know what I mean.” Bring him out. No formal interview, just get him talking, see what emerged.
“I don’t meet people much. I’m sorry I don’t understand you.”
“I wasn’t very clear. I meant I’d worked here.” She hoped he wouldn’t ask what at.
“I’ve lived here a long time,” he said, losing the thread.
“Even when it looks empty, like Christmas and Easter, there’s always people.”
If he said it, it became so. He was like a man with a perversion, he had to talk about it.
“I met you. And there was the man in the dark coat.”
“You’ve lived here a long time?” She was good at keeping the point. “But of course, you’re pretty old. How old exactly are you?” Old people loved to talk about how old they were.
“Bank manager. Not the United G.B.—I know him personally. Offered me tea and then sherry. Something about his voice I didn’t like.”
Senile. The story that could make her, oh God, and the old fool was too senile to give it.
“You said you’d lived here a long time. On your own? Haven’t you any family?”
“I have a sister in a lovely farm down in Devon. Children.”
“What a shame you couldn’t spend Christmas with them. But of course, Devon’s a long way.”
“Yes. They did ask me. But I had to say I couldn’t manage it, not this year.”
“What a shame. But I expect you’re snug enough, here in Gloucester.”
“Snug enough. That’s right.”
He was hungry, cold, and thirsty. He wondered how he was going to ask her, snug enough inside her lined ski jacket and trousers, ask her about Jewish shops and the something a little extra for Christmas. In front of the two of them the buildings soared and screamed. Behind them, behind the ceiling-high glass, the undressed shelves, Fiction A-F, showed only the shelves behind the shelves. He wondered how he was going to ask her.
“You didn’t tell me your name,” she said. “We want to know what to call each other. I m Sally Paget.”
“Smith.” Remembering what the policeman had called him. The rest was too long ago. “William Smith.” “Bill Smith. What a nice friendly name. It was clever of you, Bill, to persuade the police to let you stay in Gloucester. I heard they were—”
“Never let me stay. I hid.”
He couldn’t be suspicious of her. He loved her. He loved her ocelot boots.
“You must like living in Gloucester very much, Bill.” This was something he’d never thought about. His hands twitched and jumped in his lap as he thought about it now.
“Like living in Gloucester? It’s my home. No right to make me start out again somewhere new.”
“Gloucester is your home, and you feel you’re too old to begin again somewhere else.”
“I’ve got my home here, see. It’s a secret.”
“So you stay here even though you know what’s going to happen.”
“My collection. I’ve got my collection.”
“What collection is that? And what did you mean when you said your home was a secret?”
But he couldn’t tell her. He suddenly didn’t want to. If he hadn’t a secret he hadn’t anything. He belched up the sour emptiness of his stomach. What he needed was a hot cup of tea, and all she did was sit on asking him more and more questions, her knees together like a typist in a bank. And she repeated his answers as if she was taking them down. He jerked about on the seat, fumbling with the tape around his jacket, sliding his feet to move him away from her. Distantly the Cathedral clock began to strike nine.
“You're going to give me away.*
“Give you away?” Purposely meeting his eyes. “Whatever do you mean, Bill?*
“Away to the police. Because I hid.* Panic rising. “They gave me notes, and told me what to do. They gave me a label. They came and knocked on my door and I didn't answer, and they knocked more and talked, and I hid, and Tug hid too, and cyanide, and they talked together, and I knew, and—”
“I’m not going to the police, Bill. I promise you. I’m not going to tell them anything—cross my heart.*
Ten to one when the pictures were out the poor old sod would be dead. He was old enough and alone enough to be allowed to be dead if he wanted. She had a feeling about the sister in Devon—that the sister was already dead or had never existed. By the time you are reading this, she constructed, a fine old man will be dead, crushed by the disease of our time. A magnificent symbol—no—a grand example of independence and the indomitable human spirit—
“I'm honestly not going to the police, Bill.”
“Lots of them came when it was nearly dark. Cars up on the concourse. I saw their lights on the ceiling. Hunted. That's what it was like. Like being hunted.”
She wondered how she could help him. His home would be some hovel of plastic flour sacks under the relic of a railway bridge. Like attracted like.
“Once I had eighty thousand pounds. D’you believe that now?”
“Oh yes?" She'd believe anything. She'd found anything might be true.
“My bank manager knows. You can ask him."
“What happened to it?"
“They went." To her eighty thousand pounds was a solid mass, an it. To him it was each one of its parts, paid out, written down in check books across Europe and back again. “My wife was a very extravagant woman."
“Not only your wife, surely."
“Eighty-one thousand, two hundred and forty, eleven, eleven, to be precise." She'd have to guess his age—he probably wasn't even very sure of it himself. When I asked him he said, “We lived well but not wisely. Td do the same again” He was an educated man, alert for his seventy-five years. The sister in Devon would have to be checked on, of course.
“May I take some pictures now?" Watching which way he would jump.
“Of me? What for?"
“That's right. That's lovely." Tree-bark against glass. Moss against weather-resistant ceramics.
“I asked what for."
“I like faces. I like yours." Two more, worry and then anger prompted by elemental fear.
“Stop it. What're you going to do with them?"
“Put them in a magazine. Put them with a piece all about you."
He leaned forward, spitting his words so that strength failed her.
“I—thought—you—were—straight.” Mouth trembling. “I—should—have—known—better.”
On his feet, walking away across the precinct, not caring a damn what she did. She called after him.
“It’ll mean fifty pounds for you. Ten now in advance, if you like.”
A lot of good that would be to him. She was glad when he kept on walking, sparing her the cynicism of handing over the worthless notes. She watched him out of sight, his image at die comer so distinct and tragic it lingered for several seconds after he had gone. She inhaled deeply the completeness of the episode, pushed back her aluminum hair.
At the edge of the next wind-bleached concourse Paper Smith leaned his head, his back, his rump, his thighs, the calves of his legs against a pillar. He’d thought she was interested in him. He’d thought she was interested in him. And he’d loved her.
Her scream brought a slow reaction. He turned his eyes, and then his head, the eternal wind hissing in his beard and in the hairs in his ears as he listened. The scream was not repeated. He went slowly back into the Library precinct, not expecting anything in particular, hoping for perhaps a little blood. She had seemed a woman capable of blood.
On the staircase up to the Library were her sunglasses, their shadow still long in the nine o’clock winter sunshine. Herself, her job, whatever she’d been interested, in she’d gone. Only her sunglasses to prove she’d ever been.
And four miles to the southwest, although in no way connected, seven minutes past nine was the moment when a twenty-first floor window-box dropped abruptly, with its window-sill, onto the road below. As sometimes happens, die pieces lay instantly still. The falling had begun.
SIX
Tug was awake. Bom with a circuit occasioning insatiable curiosity he was thus a stereophonic listening device more complex, if less useful, than anything man had yet been capable of. To this curiosity he now computed the fact that the sun had moved away from his place under the hedge, programmed the resultant coldness, read off the answer, and set out at once in the direction of the sudden “crash. He left the cup and saucer on the white line in the middle of the road without a thought. And although he charted the position of the buried meat most carefully he’d still forgotten it before going more than a hundred yards. The memory bank was poor, and tended to cancel in times of intense outside stimulae.
He trotted obliquely across the road, through a front garden and a back garden, up one side of a six-foot fence and down the other, through several more back gardens and then down a neat front path into another road. He passed a shabby pram smelling of milk and blankets. On the asphalt close against the wall of the building opposite was a shattered lump of concrete and a burst-open wooden box surrounded by recently scattered earth. Tug’s curiosity was about the box, rather than where it had come from.
He circled the flung-out earth, detecting a shriveled clump of chives, also parsley and sage. Finding nothing else, and no movement, he lost interest. Since had had bothered to come that far he left his mark before moving on. He rolled in the dust by a neighboring step, among
lolly wrappers and cigarette cartons, rubbing his cheeks on the crisp metal edge. Suddenly he became still, flat as a shadow. A bird, attracted by the broken earth, settled to look with one silly eye for insects. He watched it calmly, lying with his forepaws apart like a lion. He was too full of roast beef.
The bird found what might have been a chrysalis, and gulped it down. Other birds arrived, not worried by the motionless shadow of the cat The window-box was small, and the pickings poor.
The window surround from which the sill had fallen must have been a very weak mix, for its lintel cracked next, held at the ends but sagging so that the central brick above it toppled out. With the silly eye that wasn’t looking for insects the birds saw it coming and were away. The cat was unaware, got spattered with earth as the brick landed. Then he too was off, pulled back at ten yards by the thread of his imprudent curiosity. He returned, tail high, to examine the latest arrival. The thing was dull. There was too much he didn’t understand, and he gave it up.
As he was turning away a movement above the low rooftops opposite caught his eye, and he watched a thin almost wingless arrow across the narrow strip of sky between the houses and the cliff of building at his back. He knew the noise, if that was what anybody could call it, that would follow. He crouched. It screamed like the splitting of the temple veil, tearing at the earth under his feet. The apartment block above shuddered and for some reason held. Other high buildings in the vicinity lost pieces of parapet or odd coping-stones, but Tug ignored the scattered crashes. He had learned now what they were, that they were uninteresting and quite irrelevant
The Deanery housekeeper, an old-fashioned lady, buttoned and bunned, had left large cardboard instructions propped up against all the key appliances in the kitchen. The Dean found them as clear as he found everything that she did. Of what she was he had a poorer notion—in fact she did so much that she possibly wasn’t anything. By their fruits shall ye know them. By her fruits he knew her, and by her fruits he was able to cook himself an excellent breakfast.
He sat eating toast at the Regency breakfast table by the tall small-paned window. His napkin was tucked primly into his collar, since black shirtfronts showed every mark. He saw grease-spotted clerics around him every day, and was warned. He sat and read the previous day’s paper, the passages about the Sickness that he had read many times before. When he looked up from the paper he could see the Cathedral tower intricately shining above the steep tiled roofs of Canon Falck’s house. He had a theory about his Cathedral, how it would stand though the rest of Gloucester fell. It was a theory not altogether borne out by the neighboring great Cathedral of Wells, but he reasoned (falsely) that the Sickness must be losing its power, must surely be dissipating its strength like a ripple on a pond. His theory concerned the Gothic techniques of building in compression and was—as theories went—passably sound.
The windows of-the Deanery rattled in die wake of a passing airliner. He frowned, wondering if anything could be done to divert the wretched things. The dusty green walls of the morning room were calm, and he allowed their illusion of permanence to reassure him. The monks had built believing in permanence—it was hardly wrong to share this belief with them, not in faith and ultimate acceptance. He wiped marmalade from the comers of his mouth. The hymns he had chosen for Christmas morning were delightful, a luxury he had long been denied by his tetchy organist and the demands of a ponderously momentum-loving congregation. He dismissed a twinge of guilt. His perpetual obligation was to the daily praise of God with singing and rejoicing. He could do no more.
The brown cobbles in front of his house were empty of their usual commotion. They seemed to be making small ancient noises on their own account. Canon Falck’s front door was closed and unfamiliar. The huge Cathedral tower dazzled, so close he could have touched it. Dean Goodliffe pulled his napkin out of his collar, shook it, folded it, and placed it on the table beside his red and gold breakfast cup. He interlocked his fingers. Out of his enormous fund of graceful prayers, both English and Latin, he spoke.
“For what I have received may the Lord make me truly grateful.”
And he stared, surprised at the simple things men do in their solitude.
Paper Smith picked up the sunglasses. Lenses, nose piece, side arms all in one like a single chiseled drop of oil. He hadn’t been near to, really noticed, a pair of sunglasses for a long time. He thought of white frames, little jewels in them. He thought of heat in his face and on the back of his hands. Noises came to him.
“Blast you. Little bitch.” Muffled, somewhere near. “You won’t do that again in a hurry.”
A small cry, her voice in pain. Scuffling, clothes rasping, heavy breathing.
“Hurts, doesn’t it? So did your dainty little heel, lover.”
Two people experiencing in conflict the intensity of living. He wished he was twisting her arm himself. He went to have a look.
Down an alleyway beside the Library, a staff entrance class of place with a ramp up from the road below, she was struggling, her will against that of a lean young man in blue trousers. The physical contest was already decided, and Paper Smith watched pleasurably the tightness of pain in her face. Seeing him, she gave up. The young man looked around for the reason.
“There you are,” he said. “Silly old fool—what d’you want to let her get away with it?”
“What could I do?”
“I was watching you. You didn't even try.”
“What good's trying?”
The immediacy forced a quickness of reaction on the old man. Justifications tumbled over themselves.
“She kept out of my reach. Young and quick. What goods trying when you're my age? Didn't see what she was up to till it was too late. I told her, though, told her what I thought.”
What had he told her? He couldn't remember. The other man looked over her head at him, suddenly gentle, brushing her aluminum hair out of his face.
“You did your best, old man. It’s not an easy life, not when . . . Still, it’s a lucky thing you’ve found me to look after you. You might get hurt, the way things are around here.” He broke off. In the woman’s ear, twisting tighter—“Cheap. Pick on anybody, long as they’re defenseless.”
“You’ve got her now all right,” said Paper Smith.
“Fine. Now you take her camera off her. Go on—take it.”
Paper Smith approached warily, avoiding her eyes, and grabbed the camera. The strap wouldn’t break, and he pulled, stared now into her eyes as he pulled. If she had wanted to, she could have kicked him. She could have made him let go.
“You’re wasting your time.” She stood very straight, the strap hurting the back of her neck as he jerked and twisted. “The pictures were radioed off as they were taken. You’re wasting your time.”
“Sex, and sex, and more sex.” He was beside himself. “Crawl to young men, laugh at old ones. I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it.”
“Tell him he’s wasting his time, will you? Please. That camera’s damn near a year’s salary.”
Paper Smith worried at it, clenching his gums, showing the whites of his eyes. The young man made his decision.
“Give it here, then.” Paper Smith still tugged. “I said give it here.”
Paper relinquished his hold, still snarling. He remembered now where he’d seen the white sunglasses with the jewels. It wasn’t a comfortable memory. He wiped his beard and stood watching while the young man turned the camera over in his free hand. The leather case was open, the full alloy camera expensive and deceptively plain.
