In The Dark Page 5

  He shrugged. Tonight was the second time she had seen Neville in mufti, so to speak. His hair shone with oil, his skin looked scrubbed and pink. Tonight he wore a white carnation; he had given her one too, he had fixed it to her bosom. He wore a tan jacket, a maroon cravat patterned with horseshoes and a matching handkerchief in his breast pocket. There was definitely something vulgar about the man, something of the racecourse. He really wasn’t her type at all. Besides, he was a tradesman. She might be temporarily embarrassed, but that arose from circumstance rather than birth. After all, her father had held a respectable position at the Sun Insurance Company, he had been a man of some standing in the community. In fact it was his bequest, after his death, that had paid for the lease at Palmerston Road.

  The oysters arrived. Neville leant towards her but she pushed his hand away. ‘I know how to do it,’ she said. ‘I have eaten them before, you know.’

  Neville grinned. He had a wolfish grin, white teeth gleaming under his moustache. Eithne’s stomach shifted. She busied herself with the lemon and the Tabasco, a few drops here, a squeeze there. Neville busied himself with his. It felt suddenly companionable; it had been a long time since she had eaten alone with a man.

  She lifted the shell to her mouth, parted her lips and tipped in the oyster. As a girl she had, of course, believed in God. She had drunk His blood and taken, on her tongue, the flesh He had given the world to redeem its sins.

  For a moment Eithne held the oyster between her teeth, as gently as a cat holding a mouse. Then she bit, and her mouth was flooded with salty-sweetness, the ocean made flesh.

  Across the table Neville lowered his shell. He wiped his lips with his napkin.

  ‘To be honest,’ he said, ‘I didn’t happen to be short-staffed that day.’

  ‘What day?’

  ‘That day I came to your house. With the meat.’

  ‘No?’

  He shook his head. ‘I came, wanting to see you.’ He held her gaze, across the table. ‘I’d been thinking about you, see. Thinking about you a lot.’

  Eithne’s throat closed up. ‘Is that so?’

  He nodded. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t the girl.’ There was a silence. The voices of the diners echoed from far away. Neville grinned. ‘She’s an ugly brute, isn’t she?’

  Eithne froze. ‘Who?’

  ‘Your domestic. Used to have a Staffie that looked like that. You know the Staffie, the bull terrier? Great little fighter but by God the face on him –’

  ‘Stop it!’ Eithne cried. ‘Don’t say that!’

  Her lip trembled. She glared at Neville. He lifted his hands. ‘Sorry, sorry.’

  *

  The mood was broken. They carried on eating but Eithne had withdrawn from him like a deer, fled from his outstretched hand back into the woods. She must be fond of the girl.

  Neville cursed himself. Women were tricky creatures, you had to tread warily in their vicinity. They blew hot and cold for no reason; all sweetness one moment, snarling virago the next, how could a man please them when they were as unpredictable as the March weather? His mother, God bless her, had given him a thorough education in the combustibility of the female psyche.

  Neville, however, was undaunted. It was not for nothing that he was three-times winner of the heavyweight championship, down at the Elephant and Castle. He could handle a challenge.

  For the woman had bewitched him. Her low, thrilling voice; the swell of her bosom; the vibrancy of her! There was a distinction to her, the way she held herself, quite hoity-toity, yet beneath he guessed that she was as soft as butter. She’s all woman. She’s my woman, and she knows it.

  So they ate their dinner, and made constrained conversation, and around them the great mirrored walls reflected them back to themselves, just another handsome couple out on the town.

  *

  While his mistress was out, Brutus emptied his bowels on the landing outside her bedroom. It was Ralph who smelt it. He had been cleaning boots in the kitchen. This was one of his tasks, cleaning the lodgers’ boots, but nowadays there wasn’t much to do. Boyce had possessed the largest assortment of footwear – pairs of brogues and boots, crocodile-skin and calfskin, patent-leather slippers for his evenings out on the town – but Boycie was gone. Mr Spooner had no call for boots, never leaving the house, and though Mr Alwyne Flyte left a pair outside his bedroom door on a regular basis there seemed little point in polishing the boots of a man who couldn’t see what he was wearing. Still, Ralph persevered with his diminished clientele, and was walking upstairs with Alwyne’s boots when the smell hit him.

  Cursing, Ralph dumped the boots and hurried downstairs. The dog was nowhere to be seen – probably skulking underneath some table, in shame. It was half-past ten and the house was quiet. Down in the scullery Ralph lit a lamp and searched for a bucket. It was freezing cold, in this back part of the house.

  Winnie had retired for the night; her door was closed. She lived in the small room next to the scullery. Even when he was younger, Ralph had seldom stepped inside her private domain; he sensed, somehow, that it was out of bounds.

  Tonight, however, he made a clatter as he heaved the bucket into the sink and, sighing loudly, turned on the tap. It worked. Winnie’s door opened and her face peered out.

  ‘What’s happened?’ she asked.

  Ralph told her. Winnie wrapped a shawl about herself and came out. She wore a long nightdress that appeared, in the dim light, to be printed with flowers.

  ‘Here, let me do it,’ she said. ‘We need some rags, and that Dettol there, in the cupboard. Any hot water left on the stove?’

  Upstairs, on the landing, Winnie got down to her customary position on hands and knees and started scrubbing.

  ‘What a naughty boy,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe he ate something that disagreed with him,’ said Ralph, who was sitting on the stairs. ‘Did you give him any of those rissoles?’

  ‘There was none left,’ replied Winnie tartly. ‘People liked them, so you can mind your tongue.’

  Upstairs, on the second floor, Alwyne Flyte’s door creaked open. Light leaked out. Ralph wondered why a blind man bothered to illuminate a lamp at all. Perhaps it was a comfort, the glow against his eyelids. Perhaps it kept the nightmares away.

  ‘What’s that disgusting smell?’ said Mr Flyte. They told him. ‘Your mother not back yet?’

  ‘No, she said she’d be late,’ replied Ralph. ‘She’s gone out with a friend.’

  Mr Flyte barked with laughter. ‘Well, the dog’s certainly made his opinion plain about that.’

  *

  Winnie sat back on her heels. Of course, the dog realised that something was up. That was why he was upset. Dogs had a sixth sense. She knew something was up, but then she had known for some time. Servants knew things even before their mistresses did. It was one of the things they had in common with animals.

  ‘Animals know what’s going to happen,’ she said. ‘Dulcie knew they were coming for her.’

  ‘Who’s Dulcie?’

  Winnie paused. She hadn’t meant to talk about Dulcie, but she was still groggy from sleep.

  ‘She was a horse,’ she replied. ‘They’ve got a sixth sense too.’

  Suddenly Winnie was seized with grief. She sat slumped on the stairs, unable to move.

  ‘What happened, Winnie?’ asked Mr Flyte. ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘They came to take the horses away,’ Winnie said. ‘We all knew, in the village. Some people tried to hide them in the barns and in the woods, but the horses started whinnying to each other. They knew something was up.’ Winnie stopped. She should be removing the evil-smelling bundle of rags, she should be trying to scrape the stuff down the water closet, but the strength seemed to be emptied out of her.

  ‘They took the two big Clydesdales from Mr Bancroft’s farm. Captain and Dolly were their names. They left him one, they left him Bismarck so he could do the ploughing.’ Winnie spoke in a rush, she couldn’t stop. ‘They took the carter’s mare, Judy, she knew th
e way to the station by heart, she could walk all the way to the railway station even when Mr Forrest was tipsy. And they took the vicar’s horse, and they took all the hunters from Lord Elbourne’s stables, they took them for the cavalry, all six of them, big Irish thoroughbreds, sixteen hands high some of them with plenty of bone.’ She stopped for breath.

  ‘I didn’t know you knew anything about horses,’ said Ralph.

  ‘My father’s the groom,’ she replied. ‘Lord Elbourne’s groom.’

  Ralph looked down at her, from his upper stair.

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ he said.

  ‘It broke his heart.’

  ‘Who’s Dulcie?’ asked Mr Flyte.

  ‘She shouldn’t have gone, sir!’ Winnie burst into tears. ‘She was twenty years old, she was too old, they shouldn’t have taken her! See, it took her a while to get used to a person, you had to spend time with her but once she trusted you she’d follow you anywhere, I used to feed her treacle, she loved treacle, she’d lick my fingers with her big slimy tongue, she’d lick between my fingers, she used to rub her head against my chest and I know it was only to get rid of the flies but it seemed she loved me, anyway I loved her.’ Winnie gazed at them through her tears. ‘She’s frightened of strange people. She’s frightened of bangs. When a motor car backfired she went into the ditch. What’s she going to do out there?’

  Winnie sat, her shoulders heaving. None of them heard the front door. Suddenly Mrs Clay was standing there, trying to keep her balance.

  *

  Eithne stared at the little group huddled on the stairs. ‘What’s happened?’ she cried. ‘Winnie, are you all right?’

  Winnie was weeping. So many tears in the world, thought Eithne. So much terrible news, how can we bear it?

  ‘Winnie! Is it your brother?’

  Winnie shook her head, and wiped her nose with the corner of her shawl.

  ‘It’s a horse,’ said Ralph, his voice thick.

  ‘A horse?’ Eithne tried to gather her wits. Her head swam; she hadn’t drunk wine for years.

  Winnie struggled to her feet. They were as large as a man’s. There was something shocking about their nakedness. The three of them watched the plain, raw-boned girl bundling up the rags.

  Eithne sniffed the air. ‘Has anyone noticed a smell?’

  Chapter Three

  The best and most humane way of killing all large hogs is to strike them down like a bullock, with the pointed end of a poleaxe, on the forehead, which has the effect of killing the animal at once; all the butcher has then to do, is to open the aorta and great arteries, and laying the animal’s neck over a trough, let out the blood as quickly as possible.

  Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management

  That March the Germans launched a major offensive. During the retreat at Arras, the Allies suffered their greatest defeat of the war, with a devastating loss of men. Hundreds of thousands were slaughtered and some ninety thousand soldiers were taken prisoner. General Haig pronounced, With our backs to the wall and believing in the justice of our cause each one must fight to the end. The safety of our homes and the freedom of mankind alike depend upon the conduct of each one of us at this critical moment.

  Deep in Southwark, Neville Turk was launching his own offensive. He had to have the woman. For the first time in his life he couldn’t sleep. He had moved into his mother’s bedroom, above the front of the shop. He told himself that this was due to its larger size. Nothing to do, of course, with the fact that it overlooked the high street, that the very fact that Eithne Clay walked along the pavement outside, when visiting the shops, gave the room a magnetic pull, even at night when there was no possibility of seeing her. He shifted restlessly in his mother’s bed, listening to the church bells strike the hour. He pictured Eithne’s body beneath her clothes, those swelling breasts, those wide and shapely hips. He imagined doing such things to her that when she came into the shop even he, a man of experience, reddened.

  Neville had been on intimate terms with a large number of women. He was a man of vigorous appetites and had never had difficulty in attracting the opposite sex. These trysts had taken place well away from the eyes of his mother, in small hotels around the Victoria Station where rooms could be rented by the hour – even, on occasion, in the vacant apartment belonging to one of the fellows at the Lodge, a chief constable known for his discretion. These had been brief affairs, however; he might have left some broken hearts behind but his had remained whole.

  Eithne Clay, however, had quite undone him. The woman touched something deep within him, he had become a man possessed. The more unobtainable she seemed, the more he longed for her. This one-way pursuit seemed all the more perverse, considering the number of opportunities that were presenting themselves.

  Neville’s mother was dead. So were the husbands of many women of his acquaintance. The Battle of the Somme had widowed seven of his customers, to his knowledge, and this spring there had been heavy losses with the German advance. Grief, in his experience, could have a startling effect on a woman’s libido. Little Mrs Holmes, whom he had considered one of the most demure of his clientele, had surprised him by the ferocity of her demands. He had had to explain the scratches, to his staff, as an accident with a skewer. And they were hungry not only for sex. Meat was in short supply and it was astonishing how many women would drop their drawers for a pound of mince.

  Mrs Clay, however, had so far proved resistant. Neville’s clumsiness at the Café Royal had taught him to tread carefully. She was a woman of deep loyalties and these no doubt extended beyond her maid-of-all-work; she might still be in mourning for her husband. Besides, she held herself aloof, seldom chatting with the other customers. If her situation was desperate – and he suspected it was – she gave no indication and conducted herself as a woman of means. Maybe she considered him beneath her class. Whatever the reason, her resistance inflamed him and he had had to work out a new campaign. Instinct told him not to ask her out again, not yet; instead, he retrenched, and settled in for a war of attrition.

  Neville wooed her with the most powerful armament in his possession. And here the government became, unwittingly, his ally. It introduced rationing. Sugar, butter and tea were already rationed, but that spring they extended the coupons to meat: five ounces per person per week.

  Neville was a respected tradesman and a prominent figure in the community. There was no way he was going to fall foul of the law. How fortunate, then, that he counted those very agents of enforcement amongst his closest acquaintance!

  ‘Will that be all?’ he asked Mrs Clay as she stood at the counter, her face blanched by the cold. He no longer called her madam, there was a certain familiarity between them nowadays. Their mutual understanding of the matter in hand was creating a deeper intimacy than any candlelit dinner at the Café Royal.

  ‘I do so love an Irish stew,’ she would say, casually. ‘Nothing beats it, does it, on a filthy winter’s day?’ Or: ‘My son’s very partial to liver. Plenty of iron, I’ve heard, for a growing boy.’ Neville nodded; a tremor passed between them and then she swung round on her heel and was gone, her footsteps light with anticipation.

  *

  Each delivery set Eithne’s heart pounding. She unwrapped the paper with eager fingers, as if it were a Christmas present. There, next to her original order, nestled another package. Availability was fitful and sometimes her hints could not be followed up by the item in question. Instead, she received a substitute: a pair of kidneys, a pound of sausages. For some reason this moved her deeply. The butcher, too, was finding times hard and was doing his best to accommodate her wishes. Tenderly, she pictured him puzzling as he sought the nearest alternative. She felt close to him at this moment. He did this, she knew, at real personal risk. And – even more movingly – he never charged her a penny.

  Eithne understood what was happening, of course. In her own small way she was a businesswoman; she knew that every relationship was a trading transaction. But where was the pressure? Neville
seemed to ask for nothing in return; not so far. And this moved her most of all.

  *

  Ralph’s class was cancelled. A notice to this effect was pinned on the door: Due to a family bereavement Mrs Brand is unavailable to teach ‘Book-Keeping, Typing and Ledger Preparation’ in Room 6. Our prayers are with her and her family.

  Ralph’s spirits lifted. It was shameful, but they did. He felt the hot, guilty rush of the truant, for suddenly a free afternoon lay ahead of him. He knew he should feel sorry for his teacher – according to his fellow students, her husband had gone down with his ship at Zeebrugge – but he was only sixteen and couldn’t help feeling a sense of release. Besides, he didn’t like Mrs Brand. She was a testy woman who made him feel flustered. News of death was so commonplace, and had been for so many years, that it was simply part of the background chatter of everyday life. A person only pricked up their ears when it concerned somebody they knew, or somebody more agreeable than a harridan like Mrs Brand.

  Then Ralph began to feel sorry for the unknown Mr Brand, that his brief time on earth had been spent married to Mrs Brand, who was not only a harridan but had a moustache. Maybe he had never kissed a hairless woman and now it was too late.

  Ralph’s vision blurred. It was curious, what started him off. Terrible news could leave him dry-eyed and yet the story of Winnie’s horse had filled his eyes with tears. Maybe that was because animals had no choice in the matter. One of his father’s letters had described how the cavalry horses were getting so thin that new holes had to be punched in their girths. They lead them to the saddler, he wrote, for a plate and a punch.

  Ralph left the building and started to walk home, along the river. It was a heavy day, threatening rain. St Thomas’s Hospital loomed up ahead of him. The wounded were brought here from France. They arrived by train, passing his bedroom window as they travelled up from Kent. He could identify the trains by their lowered blinds.

  Outside the hospital, the road was strewn with straw to muffle the traffic. The recent rain had made it muddy; horse droppings were squashed in it. All over London people collected horse droppings, shovelling them into buckets to dig into their vegetable patches. The smallest gardens had long ago been ploughed up, to grow food. Ralph remembered one of Boyce’s jokes. A boy meets his chum who’s wheeling a barrow of manure. ‘What are you doing with that?’ ‘Me dad puts it on his rhubarb.’ ‘Oh,’ says the boy, ‘we put custard on ours.’