The Infinite Moment (11 page)

I am no chemist, and I know no more about them than the next man. However, he was obviously keen, and, as I have said, I thought that a familiar subject might help to revive his memory, so I decided to try. I pointed to the ashtray.

"Well, this is very likely Bakelite, I think. If so, it is one of the earliest of the thermosetting plastics. A man named Baekeland patented it, about 1909, I fancy. Something to go with phenol and formaldehyde."

"Thermosetting? What's that?" he enquired.

I did my best with that, and then went on to explain what little I had picked up about molecular chains and arrangements, polymerisation and so on, and some of the characteristics and uses. He did not give me any feeling of trying to teach my grandmother, on the contrary, he listened with concentrated attention, occasionally repeating a word now and then as if to fix it in his mind. This hanging upon my words was quite flattering, but I could not delude myself that they were doing anything to revive his memory.

We mustat least, I musthave talked for nearly an hour, and all the time he sat earnest and tense, with his hands clenched tightly together. Then I noticed that the effect of the brandy had worn off, and he was again looking far from well.

"I really think I had better see you home," I told him. "Can you remember where you live?"

"Fortyeight Hart Street," he said.

"No. I mean where you live now," I insisted.

But he was not really listening. His face still had the expression of great concentration.

"If only I can rememberif only I can remember when I wake up," he murmured desperately, to himself rather than to me. Then he turned to look at me again.

"What is your name?" he asked.

I told him.

"I'll remember that, too, if I can," he assured me, very seriously.

I leaned over and lifted the cover of the diary. His name was on the flyleaf, with an address in Upper Grosvenor Street. I folded the wallet and the diary together, and put them into his hand. He stowed them away in his pocket automatically, and then sat gazing with complete detachment while the porter got us a taxi.

An elderly woman, a housekeeper, I imagine, opened the door of an impressive flat. I suggested that she should ring up Sir Andrew's doctor, and stayed long enough to explain the situation to him when he arrived.

The following evening I rang up to enquire how he was. A younger woman's voice answered. She told me that he had slept well after a sedative, woken somewhat tired, but quite himself, with no sign of any lapse of memory. The doctor saw no cause for alarm. She thanked me for taking care of him, and bringing him home, and that was that.

In fact, I had practically forgotten the whole incident until I saw the announcement of his death in the paper, in December.

Mr Fratton made no comment for some moments, then he drew at his cigar, sipped some coffee, and said, not very constructively: "It's odd."

"So I thoughtthink," said Mr Aster.

"I mean," went on Mr Fratton, "I mean, you certainly did him a kindly service, but scarcely, if you will forgive me, a service that one would expect to find valued at six thousand onepound sharesstanding at eightythree and sixpence, too."

"Quite," agreed Mr Aster.

"Odder still," Mr Fratton went on, "this meeting occurred last summer. But the will containing the bequest was drawn up and signed several years ago." He again drew thoughtfully on his cigar. "And I cannot see that I am breaking any confidence if I tell you that it superseded an earlier will drawn up twelve years before, and in that will also, the same clause occurred." He meditated upon his companion.

"I have given it up," said Mr Aster, "but if you were collecting oddities, you might perhaps like to make a note of this one." He produced a pocket book, and took from it a cutting. The strip of paper was headed: "Obituary. Sir Andrew VincellA Pioneer in Plastics." Mr. Aster located a passage halfway down the column, and read out: "

"It is curious to note that in his youth Sir Andrew foreshadowed none of his later interests, and was indeed articled at one time to a firm of chartered accountants. At the age of twentythree, however, in the summer of 1906, he abruptly and quite unexpectedly broke his articles, and began to devote himself to chemistry. Within a few years he had made the first of the important discoveries upon which his great company was subsequently built."

"H'm," said Mr Fratton. He looked carefully at Mr Aster. "He was knocked down by a tram in Thanet Street in 1906, you know."

"Of course. He told me so," said Mr Aster. Mr Fratton shook his head. "It's all very queer," he observed. "Very odd indeed," agreed Mr. Aster.

Frances paused to look into the showcase that was fastened to the wall between the pastrycook's and the hairdresser's. It was not a novelty. Passing it a hundred times, she could not fail to be aware of it, or of the open door beside it, but until now it had not really impinged. There had been no reason for it to impinge. Hers was a future that seemed, in its main outlines at least, and in so far as any woman's is, pretty well charted.

Nor did the carefully worded leaflets behind the glass refer to the future directly. They offered Character Delineation, Scientific Palmistry, Psychological Prognosis, Semasiological Estimates, and other feats just beyond the scope of the Witchcraft Act or the practical interests of the police, but the idea of the future somehow showed through. And now, for the first time, Frances found herself interestedfor it is not every day that one sends her ring back, and then looks out upon a suddenly futureless world.

All the same, and unlikely though it seemed at the moment, there must be a future of some kind lying ahead of her...

She read about Mastery of one's Fate, Development of one's Personality, Guidance of one's Potentialities, and through a number of testimonials from persons who had been greatly helped, valuably guided, spiritually strengthened, and generally rendered more capable of managing themselves by the sympathetic counsels of Seora Rosa.

It was the word "guidance" occurring several times that set up the most responsive echo. Frances did not exactly imagine that she could go to this perfect stranger and extract a plan for living a neatly readjusted life, but the world, ever since she had handed that small, registered package across the postoffice counter, had become a place for which she had no plans of her own, and she felt that an improved acquaintance with one's potentialities might give some kind of a lead...

She turned. She glanced along the street both ways, with an air of noticing and approving the freshness of the earlysummer day. Then, having observed no one whom she knew, she edged into the doorway, and climbed the dusty stairs "Marriage, of course," said Seora Rosa, with the slightest trace of a hiccup. "Marriage! That's what they all want to know about. Want to know what he looks like us, if that mattered. Don't want to know if he'll beat them, or leave them, or murder them. Just what he looks like so they'll know where to throw the lash--the lasso." She took a drink from the glass beside her, and went on: "Same with babies. Not interested to know if they'll turn out to be gangsters or filmshtarsh. Jus" want to know how many. No "riginality. No "magination. Jus" like a lot of sheep 'cept, of course, they want to ram each." She hiccupped discreetly again.

Frances started to get up. "I think, perhaps" she began.

"No. Sit down," the Seora told her. Then, while Frances hesitated, she repeated not loudly, but quite firmly: "Sit down!"

Against her inclinations, and rather to the front of the chair, Frances sat down.

She regarded the Seora across the small table which held a crystal and a lamp, and knew that she had been a fool to come into the place at all. The Seora, with her swarthy skin, glittering dark eyes, and glaringly unnatural red hair, was difficult to visualise in the role of sympathetic counsellor at the best of times: slightly drunk, with the high comb which supported her mantilla listing to the right, an artificial rose sagging down over her left ear, and her heavy eyelids halflowered against the trickle of her cigarette's smoke, she became more than displeasing. It was, in fact, absurd not to have turned back at the very first sight of her, but somehow Frances had lacked the resolution then, and not been able to gain it since.

"Fair return. That's my rule, an" no one's going to say I break it," announced the Seora. "Fee in advance, an" fair return. Mind you, there's nothing against a bit more for special satisfaction given, but fair return you shall have."

She switched on a small, heavily pinkshaded lamp close to the crystal, crossed the room a trifle uncertainly to draw the window curtains, and returned to her chair.

"Cosier," she explained. "Its easier to conscentrate, too."

She stubbed out her cigarette, drank off most of the remaining contents of her glass, gave her comb a push towards the vertical, and prepared to get to work.

"Its on me today," she observed. "Some days it's on you; some days it's notnever can tell till you start. But I can feel it now. Tell you pretty near anything today, I couldwouldn't, of course; doesn't do, but could. Something special you'd be wanting to know, beyond husband, babies, an" the usual?"

The low lighting worked quite a change in the Seora. It modified the redness of her hair, made the lines of her face more decisive; it glinted fascinatingly on her long brass earrings swinging like bellclappers, and glistened even more brightly in her dark eyes.

"Erno," said Frances. "As a matter of fact, I think I've changed my mind. So if you"

"Nonsense," the Seora told her, shortly. "You'll only be back in a day or two if you do, and then it might not be on me the way it is today. We'll start on your future husband."

"No. I'd really rather not" began Frances.

"Nonsense," said the Seora again. "They all want that. Jus" you keep quiet now. Got to conshentrate."

She leaned forward, shading the crystal with one hand from the direct light while she gazed into it. Frances watched uncomfortably. For a time nothing happened, except that the earrings swung slowly to a stop. Then: "H'm," said the Seora, with a suddenness that made Frances jump. "Nice looking young fellow, too."

Frances had a vague feeling that such pronouncements, whatever their worth, were usually made in a more impressive tone and form, but the Seora went on: "Nice tie. Dark blue an" old gold, with a thin red stripe in the blue."

Frances sat quite still. The Seora leaned closer to the crystal.

"Couple of inches taller than you, I'd say. "Bout five foot ten. Smooth fair hair. Nice mouth. Good chin. Straight nose. Eyes sort of dark grey with a touch of blue. Got a small, crescentshaped scar over his left eyebrow, an old one. He "Stop UP Frances snapped.

The Seora looked up at her for a moment, and then back to the crystal.

"Now, as to children" she went on.

"Stop it, I tell you!" Frances told her again. "I don't know how you found out about him, but you're wrong.

Yesterday I'd have believed you, but now you're quite wrong!" The recollection of putting the ring with its five winking diamonds into its nest of cottonwool, and closing the box on it became unbearably vivid. She was exasperatedly aware of tears starting to well up.

"There's often jus" a bit of a tiff" began the Seora.

"How dare you! It's not just a tiff, at all. It's finished. I'm never going to see him again. So you might as well stop this farce now," Frances said.

The Seora stared. "Farce!" she exclaimed, incredulously. "You call my work farce! Why, youI'd have you know"

Frances was angry enough for tears to wait.

"Farce!" she repeated. "Farce, and cheating! I don't know how you find out about people, but this time it hasn't worked. Your information's out of date. Youyou you're just a drunken old cheat, taking advantage of people who are unhappy. That's what you are."

She stood up to get herself out of the room before the tears should come.

The Seora glared back at her. She snatched across the table, and caught her wrist in a grip like a steel claw.

"Cheat!" she shouted. "Cheat! Why, youyou silly ignorant little ninny! Sit down!"

"Let me go," Frances told her. "You're hurting my wrist."

The Seora leaned closer. Her brows were lowered angri ly over eyes that glittered more than ever. "Sit down there!" she ordered again.

Frances suddenly found herself more scared than angry. She stood for a moment, trying to outstare the Seora; then her eyes dropped. She sat down, partly because the grip on her wrist was urging her, but more from sheer nervousness.

Seora Rosa sat down again, too, but she continued to hold Frances" wrist across the table.

"Cheat!" she muttered. "You called me a cheat!"

Frances avoided meeting her gaze.

"Somebody must have told you about me and Edward," she said, stubbornly.

"That told me," said the Seora, pointing her free hand at the crystal. "That, an" nothing else. Tells me a lot, that does. But you don't believe it, do you? Think I'm a liar as well as a cheat, don't you?"

"I didn't really mean" Frances began.

"Don't give me that. "Course you mean it. No respec'. No respec" at all. Ninnies like you need a lesson to teach "em respec'. Sh'll I tell you when you're going to die, and how? Or when your Edward's going to die?"

"Nono, please!" said Frances.

"Ha! Don't believe mebut you're afraid to hear," observed the Seora.

"I'm sorry, really I am. I was upset. Please let me" Frances began, but the Seora was not to be easily mollified.

"Farce! Cheat!" she muttered again. "Ninny!" she added forcibly, and then fell silent.

The silence lengthened, but the grip on Frances" wrist did not relax. Presently, curiosity drove her to a swift upward glance. She had a glimpse of a quite different expression on the Seora's facemore alarming in some indefinite way, than her former anger. She appeared to have had some kind of inspiration. Her hand clutched Frances" wrists more tightly.

"Show you, that's what," she said, decisively. "Sick of ninnies. Jus" show you Look in the cryshcrystal!"