Authors: Evelyn Waugh
She turned to the telephone and dialed Mr. Joyboy’s number.
“Please, please come over. I’m so worried.”
From the ear-piece came a babel, human and inhuman, and in the midst of it a still small voice saying, “Speak up, honey-baby. I can’t quite get you.”
“I’m so miserable.”
“It isn’t just easy hearing you, honey-baby. Mom’s got a new bird and she’s trying to make him talk. Maybe we better leave whatever it is and talk about it tomorrow.”
“Please, dear, come right over now; couldn’t you?”
“Why, honey-baby, I couldn’t leave Mom the very evening her new bird arrived, could I? How would she feel? It’s a big evening for Mom, honey-baby. I have to be here with her.”
“It’s about our marriage.”
“Yes, honey-baby, I kinda guessed it was. Plenty of little problems come up. They all look easier in the morning. Take a good sleep, honey-baby.”
“I must see you.”
“Now, honey-baby, I’m going to be firm with you. Just you do what Poppa says this minute or Poppa will be real mad at you.”
She rang off and once more resorted to grand opera; she
was swept up and stupefied in the gust of sound. It was too much. In the silence that followed her brain came to life a little. Again the telephone. The local newspaper.
“I want to speak to the Guru Brahmin.”
“Why, he doesn’t work evenings. I’m sorry.”
“It’s very important. Couldn’t you please give me his home number?”
“There’s two of them. Which d’you want?”
“Two? I didn’t know. I want the one who answers letters.”
“That will be Mr. Slump, but he doesn’t work here after tomorrow and he wouldn’t be home at this time, anyway. You could try Mooney’s Saloon. That’s where the editorials mostly go evenings.”
“And his real name is Slump?”
“That’s what he tells me, sister.”
Mr. Slump had that day been discharged from his paper. Everyone in the office had long expected the event except Mr. Slump himself, who had taken the story of his betrayal to several unsympathetic drinking-places.
The barman said. “There’s a call for you, Mr. Slump. Are you here?”
It seemed likely to Mr. Slump in his present state of mind that this would be his editor, repentant; he reached across the bar for the instrument.
“Mr. Slump?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve found you at last. I’m Aimée Thanatogenos… You remember me?”
It was a memorable name. “Sure,” said Mr. Slump at length.
“Mr. Slump, I am in great distress. I need your advice. You remember the Britisher I told you about…”
Mr. Slump held the telephone to the ear of the man next to him, grinned, shrugged, finally laid it on the bar, lit a cigarette, took a drink, ordered another. Tiny anxious utterances rose from the stained wood. It took Aimée some time to make her predicament clear. Then the regular flow of sound ceased and gave place to little, spasmodic whispers. Mr. Slump listened again. “Hullo… Mr. Slump… Are you listening?… Did you hear me?… Hullo.”
“Well, sister, what is it?”
“You heard what I said?”
“Sure, I heard fine.”
“Well… what am I to do?”
“Do? I’ll tell you what to do. Just take the elevator to the top floor. Find a nice window and jump out. That’s what you can do.”
There was a little sobbing gasp and then a quiet “Thank you.”
“I told her to go take a high jump.”
“We heard.”
“Wasn’t I right?”
“You know best, brother.”
“Well, for Christ’s sake, with a name like that?”
*
In Aimée’s bathroom cupboard, among the instruments and chemicals which are the staples of feminine well-being, lay the brown tube of barbiturates which is the staple of feminine repose. Aimée swallowed her dose, lay down and awaited sleep. It came at length brusquely, perfunctorily, without salutation or caress. There was no delicious influx, touching, shifting, lifting, setting free and afloat the grounded mind. At 9:40 p.m. she was awake and distraught, with a painful dry sense of contraction and tension about the temples; her eyes watered, she yawned; suddenly it was 5:25 a.m. and she was awake once more.
It was still night; the sky was starless and below it the empty streets flamed with light. Aimée rose and dressed and went out under the arc-lamps. She met no one during the brief walk from her apartment to Whispering Glades. The Golden Gates were locked from midnight until morning, but there was a side-door always open for the use of the night staff. Aimée entered and followed the familiar road upwards to the terrace of the Kirk o’ Auld Lang Syne. Here she sat and waited for dawn.
Her mind was quite free from anxiety. Somehow, somewhere in the blank black hours she had found counsel; she had
communed perhaps with the spirits of her ancestors, the impious and haunted race who had deserted the altars of the old Gods, had taken ship and wandered, driven by what pursuing furies through what mean streets and among what barbarous tongues! Her father had frequented the Four Square Gospel Temple; her mother drank. Attic voices prompted Aimée to a higher destiny; voices which far away and in another age had sung of the Minotaur, stamping far underground at the end of the passage; which spoke to her more sweetly of the still Boeotian water-front, the armed men all silent in the windless morning, the fleet motionless at anchor, and Agamemnon turning away his eyes; spoke of Alcestis and proud Antigone.
The East lightened. In all the diurnal revolution these first fresh hours alone are untainted by man. They lie late abed in that region. In exaltation Aimée watched the countless statues glimmer, whiten and take shape while the lawns changed from silver and gray to green. She was touched by warmth. Then suddenly all round her and as far as she could see the slopes became a dancing surface of light, of millions of minute rainbows and spots of fire; in the control house the man on duty had turned the irrigation cock and water was flooding through the network of pierced and buried pipes. At the same time parties of gardeners with barrows and tools emerged and tramped to their various duties. It was full day.
Aimée walked swiftly down the graveled drive to the mortuary entrance. In the reception room the night staff were
drinking coffee. They glanced at her incuriously as she passed silently through them, for urgent work was done at all hours. She took the lift to the top story where everything was silent and empty save for the sheeted dead. She knew what she wanted and where to find them; a wide-mouthed blue bottle and a hypodermic syringe. She indited no letter of farewell or apology. She was far removed from social custom and human obligations. The protagonists, Dennis and Mr. Joyboy, were quite forgotten. The matter was between herself and the deity she served.
It was quite without design that she chose Mr. Joyboy’s workroom for the injection.
M
r. Schultz had found a young man to take Dennis’s place and Dennis was spending his last week at the Happier Hunting Ground in showing him the ropes. He was an apt young man much interested in the prices of things.
“He hasn’t your personality,” said Mr. Schultz. “He won’t have the same human touch but I figure he’ll earn his keep other ways.”
On the morning of Aimée’s death Dennis set his pupil to work cleaning the generating-plant of the crematorium and was busy with the correspondence-lessons in preaching to which he now subscribed, when the door of the office opened, and he recognized with great surprise his bare acquaintance and rival in love, Mr. Joyboy.
“Mr. Joyboy,” he said. “Not another parrot so soon?”
Mr. Joyboy sat down. He looked ghastly. Finding himself alone he began to blubber. “It’s Aimée,” he said.
Dennis answered with high irony: “You have not come to arrange
her
funeral?” upon which Mr. Joyboy cried with sudden passion. “You knew it. I believe you killed her. You killed my honey-baby.”
“Joyboy, these are wild words.”
“She’s dead.”
“My fiancée?”
“
My
fiancée.”
“Joyboy, this is no time to wrangle. What makes you think she is dead? She was perfectly well at supper-time last night.”
“She’s there, in my workshop, under a sheet.”
“That, certainly, is what your newspapers would call ‘factual.’ You’re sure it’s her?”
“Of course I’m sure. She was poisoned.”
“Ah! The nutburger?”
“Cyanide. Self-administered.”
“This needs thinking about, Joyboy.” He paused. “
I
loved that girl.”
“
I
loved her.”
“Please.”
“She was my honey-baby.”
“I must beg you not to intrude these private and rather
peculiar terms of endearment into what should be a serious discussion. What have you done?”
“I examined her, then I covered her up. We have some deep refrigerators we sometimes use for half-finished work. I put her in there.” He began to weep tempestuously.
“What have you come to me for?”
Mr. Joyboy snorted.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Help,” said Mr. Joyboy. “It’s your fault. You’ve gotta do something.”
“This is no time for recrimination, Joyboy. Let me merely point out that you are the man publicly engaged to her. In the circumstances some emotion is natural—but do not go to extremes. Of course I never thought her wholly sane, did you?”
“She was my—”
“Don’t say it, Joyboy. Don’t say it or I shall turn you out.”
Mr. Joyboy fell to more abandoned weeping. The apprentice opened the door and stood momentarily embarrassed at the spectacle.
“Come in,” said Dennis. “We have here a client who has just lost a little pet. You will have to accustom yourself to exhibitions of distress in your new role. What did you want?”
“Just to say the gas furnace is working fine again.”
“Excellent. Well, now go and clear the collecting van. Joyboy,” he continued when they were again alone, “I beg you
to control yourself and tell me plainly what is in your mind. All I can discern at the moment is a kind of family litany of mommas and poppas and babies.”
Mr. Joyboy made other noises.
“That sounded like ‘Dr. Kenworthy.’ Is that what you are trying to say?”
Mr. Joyboy gulped.
“Dr. Kenworthy knows?”
Mr. Joyboy groaned.
“He does not know?”
Mr. Joyboy gulped.
“You want me to break the news to him?”
Groan.
“You want me to help keep him in ignorance?”
Gulp.
“You know, this is just like table-turning.”
“Ruin,” said Mr. Joyboy. “Mom.”
“You think that your career will suffer if Dr. Kenworthy learns you have the poisoned corpse of our fiancée in the ice-box? For your mother’s sake this is to be avoided? You are proposing that I help dispose of the body?”
Gulp, and then a rush of words. “You gotta help me… through you it happened… simple American kid… phony poems… love… Mom… baby… gotta help… gotta… gotta.”
“I don’t like this repetition of ‘gotta,’ Joyboy. Do you know what Queen Elizabeth said to her Archbishop—an essentially
non-sectarian character, incidentally? ‘Little man, little man, “must” is not a word to be used to princes.’ Tell me, has anyone besides yourself access to this ice-box?” Groan. “Well, then go away, Joyboy. Go back to your work. I will give the matter my attention. Come and see me again after luncheon.”
Mr. Joyboy went. Dennis heard the car start. Then he went out alone into the pet’s cemetery with his own thoughts which were not a thing to be shared with Mr. Joyboy.
Thus musing he was disturbed by a once familiar visitor.
It was a chilly day and Sir Ambrose Abercrombie wore tweeds, cape and deer-stalker cap, the costume in which he had portrayed many travesties of English rural life. He carried a shepherd’s crook.
“Ah, Barlow,” he said, “still hard at it.”
“One of our easier mornings. I hope it is not a bereavement which brings you here?”
“No, nothing like that. Never kept an animal out here. Miss ’em, I can tell you. Brought up among dogs and horses. Daresay you were too, so you won’t misunderstand me when I say this is no place for them. Wonderful country of course, but no one who really loved a dog would bring it here.” He paused and gazed curiously about him at the modest monuments. “Attractive place you’ve got here. Sorry to see you’re moving.”
“You received one of my cards?”
“Yes, got it here. Thought at first it must be someone playing rather a poor kind of joke. It’s genuine, is it?”
From the depths of his plaid he produced a printed card and handed it to Dennis. It read:
Squadron Leader the Rev. Dennis Barlow
begs to announce that he is shortly starting business at 1154 Arbuckle Avenue, Los Angeles. All non-sectarian services expeditiously conducted at competitive prices. Funerals a speciality. Panegyrics in prose or poetry. Confessions heard in strict confidence
“Yes, quite genuine,” said Dennis.
“Ah. I was afraid it might be.”
Another pause. Dennis said: “The cards were sent out by an agency, you know. I didn’t suppose you would be particularly interested.”
“But I am particularly interested. Is there somewhere we could go and talk?”
Wondering whether Sir Ambrose was to be his first penitent, Dennis led him indoors. The two Englishmen sat down in the office. The apprentice popped his head in, to report well of the collecting van. At length Sir Ambrose said: “It won’t do, Barlow. You must allow me an old man’s privilege of speaking frankly. It won’t do. After all you’re an Englishman. They’re a splendid bunch of fellows out here, but you know how it is. Even among the best you find a few rotters. You know the international situation as well as I do. There are always a few politicians and journalists simply waiting for the
chance to take a knock at the Old Country. A thing like this is playing into their hands. I didn’t like it when you started work here. Told you so frankly at the time. But at least this is a more or less private concern. But religion’s quite another matter. I expect you’re thinking of some pleasant country rectory at home. Religion’s not like that here. Take it from me, I know the place.”