Authors: Kingsley Amis
I
looked at him, noticing again how pale he was..
‘Well….’
He turned his mouth down. ‘A little heart attack, perhaps. Paralytic stroke. That
kind of thing.’
‘You
must have plenty of less crude methods than that up your sleeve.’
‘Well …
There’s such a lot that’s ruled out if you’ve got free will, you see. It makes
life difficult for everybody, I know, but you can’t do without it. And it isn’t
as if there weren’t still a very great deal that isn’t ruled out in the least.
I must be off; I’ve been self-indulgent enough. But let me give you one piece
of advice. Use the Church where appropriate. Oh, I don’t mean go and listen to
that posturing idiot Sonnenschein making me out to be a sort of suburban Mao
Tse-tung. But remember that he’s a priest of the Church, and as such he has
certain techniques at his disposal. You’ll see what I mean when the time comes.
Just, remember you’re getting this from someone who, whatever you think his
shortcomings may be, does indisputably know more than you do. Now, in return
for putting up with me, and for the whisky, you can ask me one question. Want a
moment to consider?’
‘No. Is
there an after-life?’
He
frowned and cleared his throat. ‘I suppose there’s nothing else you could call
it, really. It’s nothing like here or anything you’ve ever imagined and I
can’t describe it to you. But you’ll never be free of me, while this lot
lasts.’
‘Isn’t
it going to last for ever?’
‘That’s
a further question, but never mind. The answer is that I don’t know. I’ll have
to see. I mean that. Do you know, it’s about the only absolutely fascinating,
first-class, full-sized problem I’ve never started to go into? Anyway, you’ll
find out. Do you want to remember what we’ve been saying, and everything?’
‘Yes.’
‘All right.’
The young man, moving like a young man, got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Maurice, I
really have enjoyed it. Well meet again.
‘I’m
sure we will.’
‘When
I’m in my … executive capacity. Yes. You’ll come to see the point of that
part of me in the end, you know. Everybody does. Some more than others, of
course.’
‘Which
sort am I?’
‘Oh,
the sort that’s more inclined to appreciate me, obviously. You think about it,
and you’ll find I’m right. Ah.’ He felt in a waistcoat pocket of the
conservatively tailored suit, and brought out a small bright object, which he
handed to me. ‘A little keepsake.’
It was
a slender and very beautiful silver crucifix of (I would have guessed) late
Italian Renaissance workmanship, but as new as if it had been fashioned an hour
before.
He
nodded in confirmation. ‘Nice, isn’t it? Though I say so myself. I wish I could
find a way of making it genuinely difficult for somebody in my position to run
up stuff like that.’
‘Is it
you? I mean the …‘
‘Oh
yes. A piece of me.’
‘That
was coming out into the open, wasn’t it?’
‘Mm. I
must have been bored, I suppose. I thought, why not? Then I thought I was
heading straight for disaster. I needn’t have worried, need I? He hasn’t made
much difference to anything, as you see.’
‘But
you were telling me just now that the Church was important.’
‘Well,
in a way. It can’t help being. After all, it was me He was a piece of. Goodbye,
Maurice.’
The
crucifix jerked and spun in my hand, twisted itself away before I could close
my fist on it, fell non-perpendicularly to the floor and twirled off towards a
corner. As I scrambled in pursuit I heard his genial, sincerely amused laugh,
and then, just after the flash of silver had disappeared into a crack between
wainscot and floor, a deep ascending grumble which presently resolved and
separated itself into the sounds of tractor and TV set rising towards normal
pitch. I was at the front window long before they had reached it, in time to
see the unique sight of reality moving from slow motion to ordinary motion, dust
particles and wisps of smoke accelerating, a man engaged in coming to life, his
arm circling at an increasing rate as he returned the handkerchief to his
pocket. Then everything was as it should have been.
I left
the window, but with nowhere in particular to go. My heart beat twice in a
fraction of a second, stopped while I plunged forward and grasped the back of a
dining-chair, then gave such a slam inside me that I bent in the middle and at
the knees and nearly pulled the chair over. The pain in my back came while I
was in the act of moving my hand to the spot, and began steadily expanding and
contracting in a new way. I felt sweat spring out on the palms of my hands and
my chest and face, and my breathing quickened. All the fear I had escaped
during the young man’s visit was upon me now, or its symptoms were. I found the
whisky-bottle, drank a little, prevented myself from drinking more and washed
down three pills with water. I realized there were two things that had to be
done at once.
At the
doorway I could not control a momentary hesitation, but then was out and
hurrying down the passage. I found Amy, with Victor diagonally across her lap,
looking at a cricket scoreboard on the screen.
‘Darling,
what time is it?’
She
said without moving, Twenty past four.’
‘Please
look at your watch. No, show it to me.’
The
small clock-face she wore at her wrist said four twenty-two. I looked at my own
watch: four forty-six. A huge reason for fear departed, and left me feeling
much as before. I started clumsily shifting the hands of my watch.
Still
looking at the screen, Amy said conversationally, ‘So I tell lies about the
time now.’
‘But
you didn’t tell a lie. It was—’
‘You
thought I had. You wouldn’t believe me when I told you. You had to see for
yourself.’
‘Well,
you hadn’t looked at your watch.’
‘Just
before you came in I had.’
‘Sorry,
darling, but I didn’t know that, and I wanted to make sure.’
‘Okay,
Dad..’
‘Sorry.’
‘I
don’t suppose you want to watch Pirate Planet with me, do you?’ she asked in
the same tone as before. ‘It comes on at five five.’
‘I’ll
see. I’ve got a lot to do, but I’ll try.’
‘Okay.’
Next, I
went to the office and collected the still-active torch of the two Diana and I
had used in the early hours of that day, fetched from the utilities room the same
hammer and chisel as before, plus a jemmy, and returned to the dining-room. It
took me only a few minutes to get a fair-sized section of the carpet up, but
the floor-boards were of solid timber, and in the excellent repair my
predecessor had put them in. I made a good deal of noise, did some damage and
sweated copiously getting the first one up. There was nothing but whorls of
dust and streaks of cobwebby material on the laths and plaster beneath it, or
as far as my weakening light would reach between the joists. On the assumption
that the crucifix had gone on behaving supernaturally after disappearing, it
might be anywhere in the area generally beneath me, if indeed it had not passed
altogether beyond my reach. But I could see no alternative to going on as I had
started.
Time
went unprofitably by. I was working on my fourth floor-board when Nick and Lucy
arrived.
‘Hallo,
Dad, what’s going on?’
‘Just …‘
I looked up at them, and was aware of how much like a husband and wife they
seemed. ‘I dropped something down a crack in the floor. Rather a valuable
thing. I thought I’d see if I could find it.’
‘What
sort of thing?’ Nick sounded sceptical.
‘Well,
it’s a kind of heirloom. Something Gramps gave me.’
‘
Can’t you, I mean, which crack did it go down? You seem to be—’
‘No, it
rolled, you see. I don’t know.’
Nick
glanced at Lucy. ‘Are you sure you’re all right, Dad?’
‘Fine. Bit
hot.’
‘This
isn’t part of all the ghost stuff and everything that’s been going on, is it? I
wish you’d say if it is.’
‘No,
honestly. Just this—’
‘Because
you know you can tell us and it’ll be all right,’ said Lucy. ‘We won’t think
you’re mentally disturbed, or tell anyone else if you don’t want us to. It’ll
be all right.’
‘No,
really,’ I said, thinking that her use of the plural stretched the facts a
little. ‘Don’t worry; if I can’t find it soon I’ll pack up.’
When I
turned back to my work, I was aware of a brief silent conference going on above
my head, and ending with their departure. At the end of another five minutes or
so, I had the fourth floor-board out. Nothing again; or perhaps something, an
odd bulge in a joist, a small object leaning against it at arm’s length. My
extended fingers touched metal.
What I
held in my hand a moment later was just recognizable as the crucifix the young
man had given me: speckled, worn and stained almost black in places. In its
present state it testified to no sort of miracle; an impartial mind would
merely add it to the endless list of mildly surprising discoveries in old
houses. I dismissed it from consideration, but was still overwhelmed with what
felt like rage and disappointment. These and allied emotions went on showing
through while I put all the energy I could into the task of relaying floor and
carpet. As soon as this was done, they returned in full.
I left
the tools and the torch where I had dropped them, and walked round the room
trying to master myself, which meant, or must be prefaced by, discovering what
it was that oppressed me. As if in answer, my visitor’s empty glass, standing
on the low table between the armchairs, presented itself to my eye. I snatched
it up and saw the marks of a human hand on its surface and of a human mouth at
its rim. Well, what of it? Was I to take it to a spiritualist medium, a
forensic scientist or the curator of the Vatican museum? I threw it hard into
the back of the fireplace, breathing fast and starting to cry. Yes, it was
disappointment all right, with him for his coldness and his lightness, with myself
for my failure to have brought forward any question or accusation of the least
significance, and also with the triviality of the ultimate secrets I had
supposedly learned. And there was fear besides. I had always thought that
personal extinction was the ultimate horror, but, having taken in those few dry
hints about an after-life, that pronouncement that I would never escape from
him, I now knew better.
An
overwhelming desire to get out of the house took hold of me and helped me to
stop crying. There were more things to be done before I could leave. A quick shower
and a change of underclothes took off the sweat and grime of my exertions with
the floor-boards. When I had dressed I went in search of Lucy, and by good luck
found her alone in the great bedroom, brushing her short head of hair with
surprising energy.
‘Lucy, I’m
going out now and won’t be back till late. Will you tell the others? I’ll talk
to David before I go.’
‘By all
means.’
‘And
there’s something else I’d like you to do for me. I want everybody in bed and
preferably asleep by midnight. Well, I know you can’t put them to sleep, but
Joyce is never any problem, and if you could try to get Nick off in good time,
that would be a great help to me.’
‘I’ll
do everything I can, of course. Uh, Maurice, is this something to do with your
ghosts, or is it, you know, somebody you want to see privately?’
She
made this allusion to my amorous activities (I had not known that—or not
bothered before now to wonder whether— she knew about them) with commendable
tact of manner. ‘It’s my ghosts,’ I said.
‘I see.
Would you like me as a witness?’
‘Thank
you for offering, Lucy, but I’m sure he won’t come if there’s anyone else apart
from me about. You believe I saw him before really, don’t you?’
‘I
still think you thought you saw him, but I may be wrong. Did you find that thing
you were looking for under the floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Was it
any good?’
‘No.’
‘Like
the writing on that piece of paper?’
This
was an inspired guess or feat of deduction. ‘Very much like that.’
‘Well,
let me know what happens tonight, if anything does.’
‘I will.
Thanks, Lucy.’
The
last thing was getting hold of David and asking him to see to it that the few
expected outside diners and drinkers were similarly off the premises by
midnight. The resident guests could not actually be sent to their rooms, but
they were unlikely to feel like prolonged carousing in the bar the night after
a funeral so close by. I supposed, at least, that talking to David would be the
last thing, until I almost literally ran into Joyce and Diana in the car-park.
They
had their jewellery and their garden-party look on again, and were unfeignedly
sorry to see me. I thought at first that they were (as they might well be)
nervous of possible embarrassment, then I thought that they were simply
resentful at the intrusion of any third party, and then I saw that they were
even more simply annoyed because I had turned up.