Hangover Square (24 page)

What was his plan? He had worked it all out on the walk to Portslade, but now it had slipped away again. He had got to get them both together in Netta’s flat, that was the thing. And that was the difficulty, to make sure of having them both together. It had been child’s play when there was only Netta, but now he had both on his hands.

Blast Peter, for butting in like this. Couldn’t he leave Peter out of it! No, no – that was out of the question now. There could be no Maidenhead, no peace down there, with Peter left out loose and alive – the thought was absurd – he might just as well kill Peter and leave out Netta! They were both in it together – two in one, and one in two.

Then how had he planned to get them together? Ah, yes – it
was coming back – the bottle of gin and the blunt instrument. He was to get them together with the bottle of gin, and hit them with the blunt instrument.

The blunt instrument was for Sir Bernard Spilsbury – ‘evidently some blunt instrument’. It wouldn’t be right unless he made it a blunt instrument for Sir Bernard Spilsbury. He remembered deciding that.

But what instrument had he decided upon? What was blunt? He looked round the compartment. An umbrella? That wasn’t blunt. A suitcase – that was blunt but too unwieldy. Then, on top of his suitcase, he saw his golf club wrapped up in brown paper.

A golf club!… What about a golf club? Perfect? What could be more harmless-looking, what could he himself wield more skilfully or with direr effect than a golf club? Innocence itself! This was genius… Practising in Netta’s room – practising swings, and then the appalling accident. He had no idea that Peter was standing there! Peter laid out, and then settle with Netta anyhow – settle with both of them.

This was sheer genius. The uncanny cleverness of it. He was really quite excited now – both by what lay ahead and by his own cleverness. He looked around at his fellow-passengers, to see if they noticed how clever he was, the sort of man they had amongst them.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ said the rather pompous man opposite, ‘if you’ve finished with that paper of yours, would you exchange it with mine? I’ve exhausted this.’

‘No. Certainly,’ he said, ‘good idea.’ And he handed over his
News Chronicle
and took the
Daily Mail
.

‘Nothing much in any of them, I’m afraid,’ he said.

‘No,’ said the man, ‘very little new.’

He opened the
Daily Mail
and pretended to read it. There was cleverness for you. ‘Nothing much in any of them, I’m afraid.’ So completely natural. Here he was, plotting a killing in the next few hours, and he could make entirely natural conversation in a train. ‘Nothing much in any of them, I’m afraid.’ Just like that. And now he was opening the paper, and pretending to look at a column which interested him, fooling the
pompous gentleman opposite. He could fool anybody. It was almost too easy.

But he must not be vain. In that way he would cease to be clever. He was so clever that he could see even that. He had to be clever, cunning, right up to the very end, right until he got to Maidenhead. Then there would be no cunning and no sordidness any more; only peace, the bright, watery, quavering reflection of the ripples on the side of the boat…

Chapter Five

He walked along the platform at Victoria towards the barrier. His head bobbed amongst the other heads, and he entered the dense bottle-neck of human beings by the ticket-collector. For a moment he felt a little disquieted: he had a nasty sensation of being in a complete dream. He had to force himself, as it were, to keep awake in this dream. He couldn’t understand what all these people, none of them about to kill anybody, were up to – what they were getting at. They had no reality: nothing had any reality. There was only his plan: he had his plan and he was going through with it now. His plan was all he had to stick to, in a confused, meaningless, planless world.

He was feeling disquieted, so he went and had a beer at the buffet. He felt it would put him right. It did.

He came out and went straight to the telephone booths, dragging his suitcase and brown-papered golf club with him.

Because they were all filled and electric-lit, he had to wait some time before he could get into a booth: but at last he seized his chance and dragged his suitcase in and propped his golf-club parcel against the cork wall on which people had drawn drawings and scoured chocolate-coloured circles with impatient pennies. He had his plan, and put his two pennies in without hesitation.

He got her almost at once.

‘Hullo,’ she said.

‘Hullo, is that you, Netta?’

‘Yes, who’s that?’

‘This is George, Netta.’

‘Oh – yes?…’

‘What happened to you? You just vanished. I’ve just arrived at Victoria.’

‘Oh… have you?’

‘Yes… What happened to you, you just faded out? You didn’t even leave any message.’

All part of the plan… He had worked it out. He had got to he natural, to pretend to he hurt. They’d think there was something phoney if he wasn’t.

‘Didn’t we?’ she said. ‘Well, we couldn’t as a matter of fact. We were turfed out. I’m sorry.’

‘How do you mean “turfed out”?’

‘Turfed out. They told us to go.’

‘Well, I still think you might have left a message.’

‘Do you? I don’t see why… I’m very sorry but we just didn’t think about it.’

‘And I had to pay the bill, didn’t I?’

‘You’re very quarrelsome, George. We’ll pay you back, if you’re worried about the money. What’s the matter with you?’

‘Oh nothing… Netta. Listen.’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I come round and see you. I’ve just found a bottle of gin in a suitcase. I’d forgotten all about it. I thought Peter might come round and we’d open it up together.’

She paused.

‘All right,’ she said, ‘come round if you like.’

‘Is Peter there?’

‘No, I haven’t seen him.’

‘Oh well, I’ll phone him up. I’ll be round about twelve. Is that all right?’

‘All right. Yes.’

‘All right then. Good-bye, Netta.’

‘Good-bye.’

He came out into the station. He still felt dream-like, dull, bewildered, bat he knew he had done all right.

Now for the taxi to Paddington…

Paddington! Things were getting close, drawing near, be coming very real! Paddington to Maidenhead – it had come to stations now! He had so many times thought of this trip in his mind, but he had never quite thought of it as it would be when it was a near reality. Victoria to Paddington, Paddington to Maidenhead. It was all very exciting.

There were plenty of taxis drawing up in the station yard. He waited while one of them ejected its passenger, and then said to the driver, ‘Paddington Station, please,’ and got in with his suitcase and golf club.

It was pouring with rain. They went up by the wall of Buckingham Palace, and then into the Park up to Marble Arch, and then along the Bayswater Road, and then into Hyde Park Square, and past the chemist who called himself Chymist, and up again to Paddington.

A porter opened the door and took his suitcase and golf club. He paid the taxi-driver, and said to the porter, ‘I only just want to park that in the cloak-room,’ and the porter said, ‘Very good, sir,’ and led the way to the cloak-room.

While they were waiting in the noisy station for the cloakroom attendant to take in the suitcase, the porter said. ‘What time’ll you be wanting this, sir?’ and he hesitated and replied, ‘Well – I don’t really know – sometime today.’

‘Where’s it for, sir?’ asked the porter.

‘Er – Maidenhead,’ he said. ‘How do the trains go in the evening – do you know?’

‘Well – there’s the 5.15, the 6.13…’ said the porter, and reeled off a lot of trains.

The attendant came at last, and snatched the suitcase and golf club.

‘No, I’ll keep that,’ he said, referring to the golf club, and it was given back to him. He paid his threepence, received his slip, gave the porter a shilling, and went into the buffet and had another beer. Then he walked out of the station and caught a taxi in the street.

‘Earl’s Court station, please,’ he said to the driver.

Chapter Six

As the taxi sped through streets he vaguely wondered why it was he had to take another taxi, and why it was that he had to do things just in this order. When he reached Earl’s Court, he realized, he had to phone Peter from the station. Why? Why hadn’t he phoned Peter at Victoria, directly after he had phoned Netta, and got it done with? Why did he have to park his suitcase at Paddington first, and then take a taxi to Earl’s Court to phone Peter?

It was as though somebody had told him to do these things in just this order. Who had told him? Anyone? No… Of course. No one. He remembered. What a fool he was – forgetting. This was his plan. He was obeying the plan he had worked out in the train.

Obey the plan, and all would be well. Rather an expensive plan, he noticed, with all this taxi-taking. But, of course, money didn’t matter now – that was the joy of it. He would be in Maidenhead tonight, and money wouldn’t matter. That was the divine simplicity of the whole thing.

But he had to have enough money before he got there. A fine state of affairs, if he found he couldn’t get there because he hadn’t enough money! He felt in his pockets and found he had two pound notes and some silver. That wasn’t enough: there might be some hitch, and he would want a lot more than that. He would have to go to the bank. It hadn’t been on the plan, but he would have to do it all the same.

It wasn’t so easy, all this. You had to keep your brain going all the time. You couldn’t just sink into a dream and obey the plan absolutely without thinking. Well, he could do the thinking all right. He would be glad, though, when it was all over, and there was no more thinking.

He arrived at Earl’s Court station, and paid the driver. It was five to eleven. It was pouring with rain. Now for phoning Peter. He felt again curiously bewildered and curiously frightened, as he entered the phone-box. If he didn’t get Peter he would have
to make a new plan, and that would be awful. He pulled himself together and put in his two pennies.

He got Peter at once. Amazing, how he got these people! It was almost as though, when he made the plan, he had the gift of prophetic insight. Perhaps he had. It was a strange world and there were more things in it than were dreamed of in your philosophy, Horatio.

‘Hullo,’ said Peter.

‘Hullo, is that you, Peter?’ he said. ‘This is George.’

‘Oh,’ said Peter. ‘Hullo.’

‘How are you?’

‘I’m all right. How are you?’

‘I’m all right. Look, Peter. I’ve just been on the phone to Netta. I discovered a bottle of gin I’d forgotten about and I thought we’d open it up. I’m going round there at twelve. Are you coming along?’

Peter hesitated. ‘Oh…’ he said. ‘All right. I’ll be along.’

‘I hear you were turfed out at Brighton?’

‘Yes. We were…’

‘I think you might have left me a message. Just barging off like that.’

‘Sorry. We didn’t think about it.’

‘Well. All right. See you at twelve.’

‘Right. Good-bye.’

‘Good-bye.’

So that was that… Very brief, very clever. Just enough complaint about Brighton to make it seem natural, and it was in the bag.

They just fell into his hands. They couldn’t resist the free gin, of course – they never could resist free drinks. You’d think they’d have some shame, really, after what they’d done to him, you’d think they’d be embarrassed and try to avoid him. But not they. He came back from Brighton, a kicked dog but with his tail still wagging and a bottle of gin to offer, and they were ready to admit him to their company again.

Rather grudgingly mind you. ‘All right, come round if you like.’ ‘All right, I’ll be along.’ Really, they had a nerve! They were awful fools. It served them right.

He had now reached the bank and he went inside and got ten pounds from the cashier who was always kind and treated him as an equal. It occurred to him that this was a farewell, that when he had got to Maidenhead there would be no more banking, and so he would never see this man again. He felt a little tinge of regret.

When he came out he looked at his watch and saw that it was ten past eleven.

There was now only the gin to get, and then he was all set.

Chapter Seven

He had to get the gin not at a pub, but at a shop – a wine-merchant’s. He didn’t know why this was, but it was in the plan, and against anything in the plan he dared not go. It had served him well enough so far.

He found a shop, bought the gin (the money he was spending!), and then walked along the Earl’s Court Road to a pub the gang had had a row with and never used. He had to be alone, as if anyone came up and spoke to him now (if he met Peter, for instance, by accident), the whole thing might fall through.

As he walked along the crowded street in the rain he was again beset by that nasty feeling of being in a dream, of only being able to keep himself active and conscious by an effort of will, by concentrating mentally on his plan, and obeying its demands. Again he couldn’t understand what all these people, none of them about to kill anybody, were up to, what they were getting at. They had no reality or motive. Nothing had any reality or meaning. There was only his plan: he had his plan, and he was going through with it now.

He ordered a pint of beer at the pub, whose saloon-bar clock pointed to twenty past eleven. As it was no doubt five minutes fast, that meant it was a quarter past. That meant he had three-quarters of an hour. Not very long, that. In an hour’s time it might well be all over.

He was absolutely cool, though surprised, slightly mystified,
by the fact that he was at last going to do what he had planned to do for so very long – years it seemed. It was like planning in the summer to get up and have an early morning bathe, and putting it off and off day after day, and then getting up one morning and finding yourself on the diving plank. Here he was. He had only got to go in now and all his troubles would be over.

Yes, he was quite cool – bored almost. Nor had he any doubts as to his capacity to do the job quickly and without fuss. It would all be over in a few minutes. Slosh Peter with the club, and then do Netta in anyhow, she was only a woman. If he was quick enough, he could see she didn’t make any noise. Then he would come back here and have another drink. Then what? Lunch? It wouldn’t be later than half past twelve.