The Furnished Room (25 page)

They returned to the living-room. Dyce began to boast of his recent sexual conquests. Then he went on to talk of the flats, ‘The front flats are the classiest, but the back are most popular because they have fire escapes.' He explained, in case Beckett had missed the point: ‘I never met so many crooks as I have since I moved in here. They all run rackets. One type owns four houses which he lets to call-girls. Exorbitant rents, of course. No wonder he likes to have a fire-escape handy.' The tone of his boasting turned back to sex again. ‘I've got this deb, the Hon. Pamela Watson-Stott. Daddy and Mummy have a town flat, and a house in Hampshire. They don't know about me yet, but Pam is taking me down to meet them one weekend. Have to go carefully with these deb types, though. One moment they worship you; the next they go all high horse and treat you like a serf.' He added: ‘Not me, though. She tried treating me like a serf once and I slapped her haughty, vacant face.'

Beckett exclaimed wildly: ‘Will you come to the point? I'm here because we're planning a murder, aren't I?'

Dyce leaned forward in his armchair, his hands on his knees, the flicker flames of excitement like careful madness in his eyes. Neither man spoke.

Then Dyce got up, switched on the anglepoise reading light on the desk, and arranged some papers round it. ‘Take a look at these.'

When Beckett stood up he realized that the drinks had affected him faster than usual, because of the Thyrodine and lack of food.

‘This is a map of Sealing, the country town where my aunt lives. Here is Upper Lane, on the outskirts of the town. Her house, Woodstock, is on the exact spot here...' Dyce marked an X.

Because of the central heating, the atmosphere had a hard, dry heat. Cigarette-smoke curled in the light of the anglepoise. Beckett felt as if he were suspended in space. He tried to understand the map, but could see only the shape of the paper, which made a wall against understanding. He shut his eyes for a moment, and wrenched his mind into working order.

Dyce was now displaying a sketch plan of the house, and explaining that this back door had a glass pane missing, and that this was the room where the deaf companion slept. His voice was tense with excitement. His hand, holding the cigarette, stabbed repeatedly at the plan. ‘You will be absolutely safe. There will be nothing to connect you with the crime. And as for me, I shall be weekending in Hampshire, with Pamela's family, with people to vouch for my presence there all the time.' He winked. ‘Even in bed. Pamela said she'd get me the room next to hers.'

Dyce then proceeded to explain the whole plan in detail. He said that he had often stayed up the entire night, pacing round the flat, sweating with fever and concentration as he had worked out the minutest details of his project. He now made Beckett repeat those details until both of them had everything firmly fixed in their minds. Beckett was accurate and quick on the uptake; his mind raced in pace with Dyce's.

They bent over the sketch again. Dyce went on talking, lighting fresh cigarettes and rapping them on the cigarette-case before lighting them. He had removed his jacket and wore rolled shirt-sleeves and loosened tie. Behind the blue haze of smoke he looked like the dealer in a poker game.

Beckett understood and anticipated everything that Dyce said. Simultaneously, he had a brilliant image of Dyce as he was at that moment, with his features decisive like a Red Indian's. The hard glare of the light showed the place where his hair was thinning and the dark circles of sweat on the underarms of his nylon shirt.

Still talking, Dyce crossed to the drink cabinet. ‘It doesn't matter that we have been seen together. Because a man's aunt dies, there is no reason to suspect his every acquaintance.'

‘What about Jacko? He is a link between us and might talk.'

‘Not he. Every man has his price, and Jacko's is low. He can be bought with money and with the sort of tolerance a man gives to a dog who follows him up the street,' Dyce said, grinning into the mirror over the cabinet. Then he spun round. He was pointing a service revolver at Beckett's stomach. ‘Don't move.'

Beckett did not move.

‘Have you ever seen a man die with a bullet in his guts?'

‘No.'

‘Would you like to have one in yours?'

The essential was to keep calm. Beckett said easily: ‘Naturally not.'

Dyce released the safety-catch. ‘Why don't you take it from me? I won't stop you. Just walk towards me and take it.'

Beckett still did not move.

‘It isn't loaded.'

‘Isn't it?'

‘That is what you don't know,' Dyce said. ‘I tell you it isn't, but I might be lying. Why don't you walk towards me and take it?'

‘All right.' Beckett started to walk. He thought: So this is what fear is. When he reached Dyce, he touched his hand lightly and Dyce gave him the revolver without demur.

Then Dyce exploded into his exuberant, manic laughter.

The revolver was loaded all right. Beckett raised it, aimed at the window, and would have fired had not Dyce interposed, seizing his wrist. They struggled briefly and the revolver fell on the cushion of a chair.

They did not pick it up, but stood glaring at each other without speaking.

Then Dyce said: ‘Stop it! What do you want to do? Bring everybody running to find out what the noise was? Is that what you want?'

‘I want some fresh air.'

‘Are you drunk?' Dyce peered at him. ‘No, you are ill. You look terribly ill.'

‘I am neither drunk nor ill.'

‘Tell you what, we'll go out on the balcony for a bit. Wait while I stow the papers away.'

Beckett forced himself to keep control. After a few seconds it was all right. He picked up the revolver, and replaced the catch. Then he put it in his pocket and kept his fist tightly round it.

The balcony was reached through the kitchen. Sitting on one of the canvas chairs, Beckett had to admit that Dyce was justifiably proud of his balcony. The cool air was like a balm, an invisible hand on his forehead. Summer blessing, driven from the streets, lived in the leafy trees behind Grosvenor Court Gardens. He thought that if he owned this flat, he would sit out here in the evenings and look at the trees and at the distant road with its necklace of lights.

Dyce said: ‘That business of mine, when I was fooling around. I could say that I was doing it to test your nerve, but it wouldn't be true. I'm a bit of a bloody sadist….' He sounded as if he was going to continue, but instead fell silent.

Beckett said inconsequentially: ‘This is a very pleasant place.'

‘The Army ruined me for civilian life, you know. Oh, I know thousands of others were in the same position, having to settle down to a boring routine. And it didn't seem to affect them, they settled down all right. I happened to be one of the unlucky ones. I can't settle. Sometimes I wish there would be another war. I'd enlist like a shot.'

‘The next war will be a nuclear war.'

‘Yes, I know. No soldiers, just some official or other pushing a button. That is why I support nuclear disarmament. Not because I'm a pale-faced pacifist, but because I don't want a war that has no place for me in it.'

Beckett suddenly liked Dyce, forgetting his irritation at Dyce's old-boy mannerisms. He understood Dyce's recklessness and thirst for life. Ilsa also had this thirst for life, which was also a desire for annihilation. Ilsa danced and drank and shouted and told lies in order that she should not think and face her own vacuum. Ilsa lived with Katey because she could not stand being alone for five minutes. He said: ‘You remind me a bit of Ilsa.'

‘You don't understand. No bloody female's psychology is anything like mine.'

‘All right, it was only a thought.'

Dyce said: ‘I still remember the first man I killed. I was surprised. I fired and he fell down. I hadn't expected him to fall down, and I was surprised.'

The garage block was below their balcony. Beckett watched a car being driven out. It was a deluxe American model, with shark fins and green windows like an aquarium. ‘I can't imagine having enough money to own a car like that.' He got up and went into the kitchen, where he poured out a glass of water.

Dyce followed him in. ‘We will have enough money, though, if all goes well, as it must do. I think of money a lot. All those notes, in wage packets, over counters, wagered on tracks, starting businesses, buying shares, making million-pound deals, influencing everything from sex to religion and politics. Small amounts made from selling goods or services, large amounts made pure, I mean money made from money. I was brought up in a slum. I didn't have this public-school accent all my life. As a kid I spoke Cockney. But I didn't hate the rich. On the contrary I was glad they existed. My ambitions and interest weren't aroused by the Welfare State, and “fair shares for the workers” kind of crap. It was the rich who aroused my ambition, and that's why I was glad they existed. Your pal Wainwright enrages me. Middle-class bloody novelist. What right has he to be a socialist? He thinks that all workers want to abolish capitalism. Well, I was working class, and I didn't want to abolish capitalism, I wanted to be one of the capitalists.'

Something in Beckett reached fever pitch. He strode through the flat, talking at a fast pace, accompanying his words with chopping gestures with his right hand. ‘When I lost my belief in God, the balance of my life changed. Before, life was weighted down by the prospect of eternity. Now the weight is removed and life flies upwards as free and shortlived as a balloon. Of course many men, if they don't believe in God believe in society instead, which amounts to much the same thing, as religious laws are generally only sensible social safeguards. So if he is a good member of society, he will continue to act in a moral manner. But that depends on his regarding society as a mutual help co-operative system. He may, on the other hand, regard it as a grabbing contest, and a survey of history and politics and business and crime will strengthen this view. In this case, he is free not only because he disbelieves the God myth, but because he is also sceptical of the social myth.' Beckett leapt in the air. ‘For the duration of his short life he is completely free to do as he likes.'

‘You're quite right,' Dyce said. Then he enquired: ‘Are you on benze?'

‘No,' Beckett said, wiping his damp forehead.

‘Well you look ill, and you act like a madman.'

‘I'm all right.'

When he left Grosvenor Court Gardens his fists were in his pockets, one holding the gun, the other clutching a wad of fifty pounds in notes. He felt an almost unbearable excitement, as if he was the electric circuit between the two objects.

His left hand caressed the notes in their elastic band. They were crisp and new, which added to his pleasure in them. This intense excitement could only be caused by ill-gotten notes; he had never experienced it with the earned money in his pay packets. He imagined that thieves and prostitutes must also feel this excitement from handling the money they gained.

He wondered what he had done tonight; he tried to discover the nature of his act. Moral links seemed severed, so that his action was irresponsible, airborne, out of moral context. He suspected that tomorrow, when he had recovered his sense of values, he would find the action to be wrong.

Through habit, he took a bus to Notting Hill Gate. When he got off, he decided that rather than take the trouble of finding a new room, he would put up at a small hotel for a few days. He walked in the direction of Queensway until he saw a neon hotel sign.

He felt trepidation at entering, because of his shabby appearance, the craziness that had thinned his face, his staring sleepless eyes, and the grey despair that had worked into his skin like grime. He was afraid that he would be refused admittance.

Behind the reception desk sat a faded woman in a hand-knitted jumper. Beckett explained that he wanted a room for a few days, that he had left his luggage at the station and would collect it tomorrow.

She did not query his explanation, but led the way up the stairs to a vacant room. She informed him about the times of meals if desired, the whereabouts of the bathrooms, gave him his keys and left him.

He woke to white walls and quiet. Like a patient emerging from anaesthetic, he had no idea of the time. It was broad daylight. He looked at his watch, but it had stopped.

From somewhere in the hotel a telephone rang three times and then stopped. He thought: Obviously people are up and about. It must be late.

The room smelled of closed windows and talcum powder. He rolled and lit a cigarette, then lay watching the silken floss of smoke that ravelled and unravelled in incense-blue threads.

The smoke worsened the used smell of the room. Inhaling made him dizzy. His headache was like a steel clamp round his brow, and his body prickled with hot and cold sweats.

He got up and opened the window. No air came in, the heavy net curtains did not stir. The street below was deserted. The tall white hotel opposite was the same as his own tall white hotel.

A young woman turned the corner and came down the street. The tap of her high heels was sometimes behind her, sometimes ahead of her. She had dark hair, a black low-necked sweater, and a flaring orange skirt.

She passed under his window, made squat by perspective, and he could see intimately her hair parting, her fat breasts and the junction of her several shoulder-straps.

It occurred to him that although he was living in a state of excitability he had not been troubled by desire for women lately. He wondered whether the Thyrodine pills dulled the sexual appetite.

Remembering the girl with pearly hair in the lift, he felt warm inside. He knew that every time he remembered her he would feel warm and happy inside in this way. The incident had been complete in itself; he had not wanted to spoil it by seeing her again. He knew that she, too, would occasionally remember the episode and feel happy about it. Poor kid, he thought, having to live with that fat slob and entertain his ghastly friends.