Sunday Best (3 page)

I shoved the duck away, and the ripple revealed my parts again. I got out hurriedly and dried myself with the ‘her' towel. I wondered for a moment what had brought me to the Johnson bathroom, and then I realized the full impact of my whereabouts. I put my ear to the door, but after a few minutes it was clear that the performance below was over. The
silence unnerved me, because it made less plausible my presence in their house, leave alone naked on the bathroom mat. (Hers.) I dressed hurriedly, tho' now, whatever had happened was over, and beyond anybody's interference. I wondered whether I could slip out of the front door and back home without being observed. As long as young Tom was not waiting in the hallway. I decided to make a bold dash for it, and almost tripped on my dressing-gown as I ran down the stairs. I reached the front door, where Tommy, from nowhere, blocked my way. He was very white and I heard him trembling.

‘Go an' look,' he said with an accusing hostility that was quite beyond me. ‘Go an' look wot she done.'

‘Go and look what she did,' I corrected. I felt the need to delay, and I was playing for time.

‘Go on,' he insisted. ‘Go an' look.' He was not prepared to correct himself and prove my victory, but neither did he want another rebuff, which the young lad would have got most certainly, for I am, first and last, a schoolmaster. ‘What has she done?' I parried.

‘Go an' look. You'll see,' he said.

‘Surely it's none of my business,' I tried.

He sneered at me. ‘You 'ad a bath in our 'ouse, didn't you?'

I refrained from aspirating him. He was right. Having used their bathroom, I was practically one of the family.

‘I'll go and look if you insist,' I said nonchalantly, trying to imply that it was only a joke he was playing. I dawdled towards the living-room door but Tommy didn't follow me. I would have given anything not to go inside, and heartily wished myself back in my own study, behind my net curtains and like everybody else in the street, minding my own business. Tommy was staring at me while I waited, with such a look of hatred, that I felt that whatever lay behind that door was my responsibility. As indeed it was, as I was soon to discover.

I raised my hand to knock on the door.

‘You don't 'ave to knock,' he said with assurance, as if there were no formality inside that requested privacy. ‘Go on in. See wot she done,' he risked it again.

But I knocked on the door again, and waited. There was no answer. And now, glad of an excuse, I turned to go away. But Tommy was quickly at my side, in command of the situation.
He kicked the door open, and practically pushed me inside, while I resolved to punish him brutally in class the following day. But I quickly lost all thought of Tommy as I was confronted by what lay on the living-room floor. Mr Johnson, the whole length of him, his curly head neatly filling the great angle of the hypotenuse on their triangled red Axminster. And there was no doubt about it that he was dead.

‘Who done it?' I stammered, infected by Tommy's outrageous lack of grammar. I looked up and saw her, sitting dumbly, her hair ruffled, her blouse and skirt torn, gripping one furry bedroom slipper in her hand. She struck me at that moment as being quite beautiful, and I quickly looked back at her late spouse again, as I suddenly recollected that tin of powder on the bathroom shelf. His mouth hung open, and thank God, his dislodged dentures claimed ownership, and I sighed with relief that the powder would never be used again. I had thoughts of bending down to his mouth and refitting them, to add, perhaps, a little dignity to his passing, but sod him, I thought. He'd probably deserved whatever had come to him, and I was too moved by his wife to feel any sympathy in his direction. Then I noticed that his eyes were open, and I realized that this was the first corpse I had ever seen. I do not know by what instinct I knew that Mr Johnson was dead. There was no blood on him, nor sight of any weapon that could have reduced him to that position. But I knew that he was dead, and probably looking as my father must have looked when his ticker gave out. I had flatly refused to look at my father's body. Corpses should be avoided wherever possible, and I gave little thanks to Mr Johnson that I had accidentally come upon his. He reminded me so much of my father, tho' they looked not one whit alike, that I wanted to pick up one end of the carpet and roll it over him. I was in no mood to be reminded of my father, I can tell you, and I see no reason why I should tell you why. My father was a bastard, let's leave it at that, and I have no intention of giving him even the thinnest of immortality with my feeble pencil. Let him rot and let's all forget him. He was a drunk and he brought no good to anybody in his life and to some people a great deal of harm. I know you're thinking that this is no way to talk about a father especially if he is dead. You can think what you like. It's my father and I can do what I like with him. No wonder Mr Johnson reminded me of him. They both had it coming to them.

I swung round on Mrs Johnson, and for some reason I shouted at her. I felt like a policeman. ‘What happened?' I said.

She began to cry. Now in normal circumstances, a woman's tears will drive me from the house. I spent most of my childhood running away from my mother, though you can think what you like. I won't go into that one either. I cannot bear tears. They are the worst form of blackmail, and I will not be cowed by them. But for some reason, with Mrs Johnson I stayed put, probably because I feared that my exit in any case was blocked by her horrible son. I went over to her, and bending down, caught sight of her breasts through the rip in her blouse. They heaved as she wept, and I hoped she'd weep for ever. I waited, allowing a silence, which I thought was only decent in the circumstances, while gulping an eyeful of cleavage. I timed that silence rather well, I thought, then, covering her hand with mine, I repeated the question softly.

I felt like the hero of an exceedingly ‘B' movie.

She did not look at me, but neither did she move her hand. ‘He just collapsed,' she said. ‘He had a bad heart, I know.'

‘But you were screaming. He was hitting you.' I wanted him to have earned his death.

‘We had a quarrel,' she said.

I felt it pointless now to ask what the quarrel had been about, but she was already pouring it out between the sobs, and tho' her voice was highly charged, there was something flat about the whole narration, a bland unaccusing recital of facts. He had accused her of having other men. It was no new accusation. He was insanely jealous, and any seemingly irrelevant annoyance would spark off the charge. Over the years, she'd put up with it in silence, denying it time and time again, as indeed, as she claimed, she had every right to. But suddenly, she had had enough. Yes, she offered that there had been other men, plenty of them, and then, to give him his money's worth, she told him that even Tommy wasn't his. It was at this point that he'd started hitting her, and demanding the name of Tommy's father. She hated him by now, and smarting under his blows, felt absolutely no need to withdraw her story. So she had just said the first name that had come into her head.

She trembled at this point in her story, and so did I, and for
good reason. For whose name is on the tip of all tongues? What other, than George Verrey Smith. He stopped hitting her to ask for a repeat, with which she obliged. Now if any name is to be reckoned with on a second take, it is mine, and he promptly collapsed and she supposed it was from his heart.

My immediate impulse was to go over to him and tell him it wasn't true. I had, on all accounts, to clear my name. I knew it was useless, but I did it all the same, and when I'd put him in the picture, I turned and did the same for her. ‘You know it's not true,' I said. ‘Why me, of all people?'

She started crying again. ‘I suppose it's because you're a neighbour. You just came into my mind.'

I felt a tinge of insult that this, in her mind, had been my sole qualification for putative fatherhood.

‘I think Tommy heard it too,' she added, throwing off this last piece of information as if it were of no importance.

I rushed outside to see if Tommy, eavesdropping as I had no doubt, had heard at least the truth of the story. But he was nowhere to be seen. I came back into the room. ‘Look,' I said patiently, ‘it's terribly important to know whether Tommy heard. Did he, or didn't he hear?'

‘I don't know,' she said helplessly.

For a moment I lost sympathy with her, realizing my own predicament. ‘We have to find out,' I said, but I realized that she was in no state to deal with this problem, and that she needed some practical and immediate help. I phoned her doctor, mother and sister, and rallied the forces that she feebly volunteered. I made her some tea, and forced her to take a little brandy. I was suddenly anxious to leave, and I patted her forehead as a preliminary gesture of leavetaking. I gave her promises to return, and to send my wife to console her, and I covered as well as I could my haste to get out of the door. And there outside, from nowhere, was Tommy. I looked at him for some clue, and there was the same hostility in his eye. I decided to take the bull by the horns.

‘I'm not your father, Tommy,' I said. ‘Your mother was very overwrought.'

He let me pass in front of him and I felt his eyes on me all the time. He waited for me to open the front door. Then he shouted, ‘You are my father. My mother told my Dad, and I hate you.'

I hated him too at that moment, but resolved to postpone thinking about him, until I could do so calmly. My main purpose at that moment was to get back to my own house, rush upstairs to my study, bolt the door and collect my thoughts. I looked forward to tickling my teeth for a while. Moreover I had not yet looked at the Sunday crossword. And I toyed with the idea of putting on my Sunday clothes. And what with thoughts of my neighbour's demise, I had a full morning in store. Life was good.

But it was not to be. The hall was crowded with women and a sprinkling of their husbands from the neighbouring houses. I had been seen entering the scene of the crime, for crime it had to be, and they had gathered to await my return.

‘What happened?' my wife shouted, as soon as I got a foot in the door. She was always speaking on everyone else's behalf. She was a born chairman.

‘I'd rather not comment,' I said, mindful of the desperate telly interview. ‘No comment at all,' I added with authority, and with the hint that there was a great deal to comment about. Mrs Pratt from the corner double-fronted, stared at me with hatred. She had spent the waiting period salivating in anticipation, and now her mouth fell open and the spittle dribbled down her hostile chin. She would never forgive me. I pushed my way through the unfriendly crowd and managed to get half-way up the stairs, when a shrill voice called my name. ‘Mr Verrey Smith,' it rang out, and I enjoyed hearing it. It is a name, you must admit, that needs to rend the air if it is to be savoured in its full splendour. I let its echo subside before I turned. The call came from Mrs Bakewell. I knew it was she, because the calling of a name like mine cannot but fail to leave an aura about the person who has voiced it. Besides which, her mouth was still open, Mrs Bakewell being slightly adenoidal.

‘Mrs Bakewell?' I queried. I had never liked her. Her language was irritatingly prim. Every syllable was dry-cleaned before uttered. And she was much taller than her husband, which was what I hated her for the most, because I had no doubt, in fact I knew, for I had known them both before their marriage, that at the time of their wedding they were both the same size. Over fifteen or so years, she had pecked away at him with her tight mouth, and laundered vocabulary. She
probably gave it to him only for Christmas, or on his birthday. I didn't even get it on those days, which probably accounted for my mounting hostility to the woman, and at this reminder of my long abstinence, I could have killed her. ‘You wanted something?' I sneered.

‘You were in the house,' she said, hanging each word out to dry, ‘while a lady was screaming. Perhaps you were involved,' she threatened.

My hatred suddenly inspired me. ‘That was no woman screaming, Mrs Bakewell. The screaming came from Mr Johnson.'

‘Rubbish,' she spat, ‘that was a woman's voice.'

‘So it sounded,' I said with dignity, ‘but it came from Mr Johnson after his wife had cut off his balls.'

That'll teach you, I thought, you frigid bitch, and the red flush that rose up her cockerel neck and blanched about the gills rewarded me, and proved that it had been well worth the try. I left it in the air and turned to go up the stairs. I felt that down below, no one, not even my wife, knew whether or not to take me seriously.

I locked the door of my study. I had much to think about. After all, it was not every Sunday that I became a father. But why me, and it was this thought, out of all the morning's activity, that lingered and most excited me. It was surely no accident that she had given my name. I know, and so do you by now – I have laboured it enough – that it is a good name, but there are dozens of men in the street whom she knows by name. And yet it had been mine. I had thought of my hyphenless handle in conjunction with many a profession; an explorer, a club secretary, a surgeon even. But an adulterer, never. And I began to have thoughts.

I do not relish such thoughts, and there is only one way, for me at least, to get rid of them. If I put on my Sunday clothes, my lustful thoughts evaporate. It is an infallible cure for adulterous fancies, and though, as I grow older, I get the disease less and less frequently, I seem, for some unknown reason, to become more and more addicted to the cure. So I went to my wardrobe for my Sundays.

I keep them in a separate hanging compartment, because they have nothing to do with the man who wears my ordinary clothes. I opened the cupboard and viewed my range. It is very
limited. I have never actually gone so far as to pay out good money for my Sundays. I make do with what my wife gives me. I've told you before that she is very understanding. She is tolerant and even indulgent of this little hobby of mine. She has given me her pink chiffon, her blue taffeta and her indispensable little black, that turned out to be not so indispensable after all. I am a little short on trappings and trimmings, and my only jewels are a string of her imitation pearls. Sometimes, I would slip into her bedroom and borrow some earrings, but I was not prepared to face that crowd in the hall. I debated which Sunday to put on, and I decided on the chiffon, remembering that I was down to my last pair of nylons, and that the chiffon was long enough to hide the ladders. I laid out the dress, the underwear, the shoes and stockings on my couch, and I started on my face.