The Best of Gerald Kersh (17 page)

Wainewright was not a drinking man. Alcohol gave him a headache. But now he felt that everything was changing inside him: he was getting into step with life. Now he wanted a drink. He walked jauntily to the ‘Duchess of Douro’. Tooth had taken him there once before, one Saturday afternoon several months ago. Wainewright remembered the occasion vividly: he had not yet come into his inheritance; he worked for his living then. His aunt was still alive. He was waiting: she could not live for ever. His little Personal Expenses Cash Book said that Wainewright had had seven hair-cuts since then. This made five months since his last drink of beer with Tooth.

Tooth was a tall dark man, strongly built, bright with the sickly radiance and the good-fellowship of the travelling salesman. He resembled one of those wax models that make cheap clothes attractive in the
windows
of mass-production tailors: he had the same
unnatural
freshness of complexion, the same blueness of chin, agelessness of expression, and shoddy precision of dress. Tooth wore Tyrolean hats and conspicuous tweeds. He liked to be seen smoking cigars. Yes, with his fivepenny cigars he was a man of personality with a manner at once detestable and irresistible – a way of seeming to give himself body and soul to the
achievement
of the most trivial objects. He could not accept the finality of anybody’s ‘No’. Argument, with Tooth soon became acrimonious, full of recrimination. Women described him as ‘masterful’; Tooth would shout for twenty minutes over a bad penny, a bus ticket, or an
accidental nudge of the elbow.

‘Have a drink,’ Tooth had said.

‘I couldn’t really, Tooth.’

‘You can and will, cocko. There’s a girl in the ‘Douro’ I want to introduce you to. A blonde. Genuine blonde: I found out. Eh? Ha-ha! Eh? Come on.’

On the way to the public-house Tooth talked:

‘Having the car painted. Just as well: I always seem to get myself into bother when I’m out in the car. Be lost without it, though. Tell you about the other night? Listen: I’m on my way to Derby. Listen. Listening? Well … listen:

‘On the way I meet two girls, sisters. Both ginger; one slim and the other plumpish. So I say: “Want a ride?” And so they say: “Yes”. And well … after a few miles we pull up …’ Tooth became briefly but luridly obscene. ‘But listen: the joke of it was this; I ran ’em about fifteen miles farther on and we pulled up at a sort of tea-shop place and went in for a cup of tea. Listening? Well, I order tea and cakes and things, and I say: “Excuse me, my dears, I’ve got to see a man from the Balkans about a boarhound,” I say. “Pour my tea out and I’ll be right back,” I tell ’em. So I nip out, start up the old jam-jar, and scram before you can say knife. Eh? Ha-ha! Eh? Eh?’

‘But what happened to the girls, all that way from home?’

‘That’s their look-out. I told you I had to get to Derby, didn’t I? What was I going to do with ’em in Derby? Have a heart! Ah-ah, now you’re coming in here to meet the nicest barmaid in London. No nonsense. Shut up. Come on in now.’

He crashed through the grouped drinkers, pulling
Wainewright after him. A tall young woman with
honey-coloured
hair, whose face was strangely expressive of lust and boredom, dragged languidly at the handle of a
beer-engine
. But when she saw Tooth she smiled with unmistakable sudden joy. Only a woman in love smiles like that.

‘Baby,’ said Tooth, ‘meet Mr Wainewright, one of the best.’

‘Why, Sid! Why haven’t you been to see me for such a long time?’

‘Been busy. But I’ve been thinking of you. Ask George Wainewright. We met in the City. He wanted me to go with him to a posh week-end party in Kingston. (He’s a very well-to-do man.) But I insisted on coming here. Did I or did I not, Wally?’ said this pathological liar.

The compulsion of Tooth’s glance was too strong. Wainewright nodded.

‘See, Baby? Now, what’ll we have?’

‘I, ah, a small shandy.’

‘Oh, no, George. Not if you drink with me, you don’t. None of your shandies. Drink that stuff and you don’t drink with me. You’re going to have a Bass, a Draught Bass. That’s a man’s drink. Baby, two Draught Bass.’

‘He always has his own way,’ said the girl called Baby.

‘Skin like cream,’ whispered Tooth, with a snigger. When the girl returned with the beer he leaned across the bar and stroked her arm. ‘This evening?’

‘No, I can’t.’

Tooth grasped her wrist. ‘Yes.’

‘Leave go. People are looking.’

‘I don’t care. I’ll wait for you after eleven.’

‘I shan’t be there. Let go my arm, I tell you. The manager’s coming over.’

‘This evening?’

‘Stop it, you’ll get me the sack.’

‘I don’t care. This evening?’

‘All right, but let go.’

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

Wainewright saw four red marks on the white skin of her arm as Tooth released her. She rubbed her wrist, and said in a voice which quivered with admiration: ‘You’re too strong.’

‘Eh, George?’ said Tooth, nudging Wainewright and grinning.

‘You must have one more drink with me,’ said Wainewright, emptying his glass with a wry face, ‘and then I must be off…. Excuse me, miss. One more of these, please.’

‘Eh? Eh? What’s that? Oh no, damn it, no, I don’t stand that. You make it two more, Baby. Do you hear what I say?’ Fixing Wainewright with an injured stare, Tooth added: ‘On principle, I don’t stand for that kind of thing.’

‘Very well.’

‘So I should think! No! Fair’s fair! Well, and where are you staying now?’

‘In my aunt’s place still.’

“Hear that, Baby? Looking after his old auntie, eh? His nice rich old auntie. Ha-ha! He knows which side his bread’s buttered, George here. No offence, George. I’m going to look you up in a week or two. I want a nice room, reasonable.’

‘We’re full right up just now, Tooth.’

‘Ah, you old kidder! Isn’t he a kidder, Baby? You’ll find me a room all right. I know.’

And surely enough, a fortnight later Tooth came, and by then Wainewright’s aunt was dead, and there was a room vacant in the solid and respectable old house in Bishop’s Square. So Tooth had come to live with
Wainewright
. Yes, indeed, he had blustered and browbeaten his way into the grave, as luck ordered the matter; for there Mrs Tooth had found him.

And therefore all Britain was waiting for a Notable Trial and, under rich black headlines, the name of George Wainewright was printed in all the papers, called by the prosecution as witness in the Victoria Scissors Murder.

Mr Wainewright smiled as he entered the ‘Duchess of Douro’: this pub had brought him luck. In this saloon bar he had found power.

*

The barmaid called Baby was still there. Wainewright stood at the bar and waited. ‘What can I get you?’ she asked.

With a gulp of trepidation Wainewright said. ‘Whisky.’

‘Small or large?’

‘Ah … large, please.’

‘Soda?’

‘Yes, please.’

‘Ice?’

‘Please.’

He looked at her. She did not recognise him. He said: ‘You don’t remember me.’

‘I’ve seen you somewhere,’ she said.

‘I was in here some time ago with a friend of yours.’

‘Friend of
mine
?’

‘Tooth.’

‘Who?’

‘Tooth. Sid Tooth.’

‘Sid! I didn’t know he was called Tooth. I thought his name was Edwards. He told me his—— Well,
anyway
…’

‘If you didn’t know his name was Tooth, you don’t know about him, then,’ said Wainewright, gulping his drink in his excitement.

‘Know what?’

‘Victoria Scissors Murder,’ said Wainewright.

‘What’s that? Oh-oh! Tooth! Was that Sid? Really?’

‘Yes, that was Sid. It happened in my house. I’m Mr Wainewright. I’m witness for the prosecution.’

She served another customer: Wainewright admired the play of supple muscles in her arm as she worked the beer engine.

‘Want another one?’ she asked, and Wainewright nodded.

‘Will you have one?’

‘Mustn’t drink on duty,’ she said. ‘So
that
was Sid! Well.’

‘I’m sorry to be the bearer of sad tidings,’ said
Wainewright
.

‘Sad tidings? Oh. I didn’t know him very well. We were just sort of acquaintances. Scissors, wasn’t it? Well, I dare say he deserved it.’

Wainewright stared at her. ‘I was in the next room at the time,’ he said.

‘Did you see it?’

‘Not exactly: I heard it.’

‘Oh,’ said the barmaid. ‘Well …’

She seemed to bite off and swallow bitter words. ‘WELL what?’ said Wainewright, with a little giggle.

She looked at him, pausing with a glass in one hand and a duster in the other, and said:

‘That makes one swine less in the world.’

‘I thought you liked him,’ Wainewright said.

‘I don’t like many men.’

‘Oh,’ said Wainewright. ‘Um … ah … oh, Miss,’

‘Yes?’

‘Tooth. Did he … ah …’

‘Did he what?’

‘Oh, nothing.’

‘Yes, he did,’ said the barmaid.

‘Did what?’

‘Nothing,’ She turned away. ‘Excuse me.’

Wainewright wanted to talk to her. ‘May I have another?’ he asked. ‘Do you mind?’

He emptied his third glass. ‘You don’t like me,’ he said.

‘I don’t know you.’

‘Do you want to know me?’

The barmaid called Baby said: ‘Not particularly.’

‘Don’t go,’ said Wainewright.

She sighed. There was something about Wainewright that made her uneasy: she did not like this strange, dead-looking empty-eyed man. ‘Do you want something?’

He nodded.

‘Another double Scotch?’

Wainewright nodded absently. Baby replenished his glass: he looked at it in astonishment, and put down a ten-shilling note.

‘You’ve got some silver,’ she said.

‘I haven’t got anything at all,’ said Wainewright, ‘I’m lonely.’

The barmaid said, in a tone of hostility mixed with pity: ‘Find yourself somebody.’

‘Nobody wants me. I’m lonely.’

‘Well?’

‘I’ve got eight thousand pounds and a house. A big house. Big, big …’ He spread his arms in a large
gesture
. ‘Twenty years I waited. God, I waited and waited!’

‘What for?’

A buzzer sounded. A voice cried: ‘Order your last drinks please, gentlemen! Order your last drinks!’

‘She was eighty-seven when she died. She was an old woman when I was a boy.’

‘Who was?’

‘Auntie. I waited twenty years.’

‘What
for
?’

‘Eight thousand pounds. She left it to me. I’ve got eight thousand pounds and a house. Furnished from top to bottom. Old lease. It brings in seven pounds a week clear.’

He groped in a fog, found himself, and dragged
himself
up.

‘Pardon me, Miss,’ he said. ‘I ought not to drink.’ He felt ill.

‘That’s all right,’ said the barmaid.

‘Will you excuse me, Miss?’ asked Wainewright.

The girl called Baby was turning away. Something like rage got into his throat and made him shout: ‘You think I’m nobody! You wait!’

A doorman in a grey uniform, a colossus with a
persuasive
voice, picked him up as a whirlwind picks up a
scrap of paper, and led him to the door, murmuring: ‘Now come on, sir, come on. You’ve had it, sir, you’ve had enough sir. Let’s all be friendly. Come on, now.’

‘You think I’m nobody,’ said Mr Wainewright, half crying.

‘I wish there was a million more like you,’ said the doorman, ‘because you’re sensible, that’s what you are. You know when you’ve had enough. If there was more like you, why …’

The swing-door went
whup,
and Mr Wainewright was in the street.

He thought he heard people laughing behind him in the bar.

‘You’ll see, tomorrow!’ he cried.

The doorman’s voice said: ‘That’s right. Spoken like a man. Here you are, then, sir. Where to?’

A taxi was standing, wide-open and quivering.

‘77, Bishop’s Square, Belgravia,’ said Mr Wainewright.

‘Bishop’s Square, Victoria,’ said the taxi-driver.

‘Belgravia,’ said Mr Wainewright.

The doorman was waiting. He fumbled and found coins. ‘Here,’ he said. The doorman saluted and the
taxi-door
slammed. Everything jolted away. At Whitehall, Mr Wainewright realised that he had given the doorman four half-crowns instead of four pennies. He rapped at the window.

‘Well?’ said the driver.

‘Oh, never mind,’ said Mr Wainewright.

Let them all wait until tomorrow. They would know then to whom they had been talking.

But on that Sunday, for the first time in ten years, the editor of the
Sunday
Special
cut out John Jacket’s article. Twenty minutes before midnight, formidable
news came through from Middle Europe. Jacket’s page was needed for a statistical feature and a special map.

Mr Wainewright went over the columns, inch by inch, and found nothing. He telephoned the
Sunday
Special.
A sad voice said: ‘Mr Jacket won’t be in until Tuesday – about eleven o’clock. Tell him what name, did you say? Daylight? Maybright? Wainewright. With an E, did you say, did you say? E. Wainewright? Oh, George. George E. Wainewright? Just George? George. Make your mind up. George Wainewright, I’ll give Mr Jacket the message. ’Bye.’

On Tuesday, Mr Wainewright arrived at the offices of the
Sunday
Special
before half-past ten in the morning. Jacket arrived at a quarter to twelve. He saw that the little man looked ill.

‘How are you, George?’ he asked.

‘Mr Jacket,’ said Mr. Wainewright, ‘what’s
happened
?’

‘Happened? About what?’

‘I hate to disturb you——’

‘Not at all, George.’

‘We met, you remember?’

‘Certainly I remember. Hm?’

‘The piece you were going to put in the paper about … about … my views on the Tooth case. Did you …?’

‘I wrote it, George. But my page was cut last Sunday. On account of Germany. Sorry, but there it is. Feel like a drink?’

‘No, nothing to drink, thank you.’

‘Coffee?’

‘Perhaps a cup of coffee,’ said Mr Wainewright.