The Fallen Curtain (18 page)

She studied the meter, kneeling down. It was the first time in her sheltered, cosseted, snug life that she had ever actually seen a coin-in-the-slot gas meter. But if morons like hotel servants and the sort of people who would stay in a place like this could work it, she could. There was the slot where the coin went in, there the gauge whose red arrow showed empty. All you had to do, presumably, was slip in the coin, fiddle about with that handle, and then, if the gas-fire dial was on, toxic coal gas—the kind of gas that had killed thousands in the past, careless old people, suicides, accident-prone fools—would rapidly
begin to seep out of the unlighted jets in the fire. James wouldn’t smell it. Drink paralysed him into an unconsciousness as deep as that which her own sleeping tablets brought to her.

Nina was certain it wouldn’t matter that she hadn’t attended closely to the manageress’s instructions. What had she said? Turn the handle to the left, insert the coin, turn it to the right. She hesitated for a moment, just long enough for brief fractured memories to cross her mind—James when they were first married, James patient and self-denying on their honeymoon, James promising that her coldness didn’t matter, that with time and love … James confessing with a defiant smirk, throwing Frances’s name at her, James going on a three-day bender because she couldn’t pretend the wound he’d given her was just a surface scratch, James drunk night after night after night….

She didn’t hesitate for long.

She got her coat, put the car keys in her handbag. Then she knelt down again between the gas fire and the meter. First she checked that the dial, which was small and almost at ground level, was set at “full.” She took hold of the brass handle on the meter and turned it to the left. The coin slot was now fully exposed and open. She pressed in the fivepence piece and flicked the handle to the right. There was no need to wait for the warning smell, oniony, acrid, of the escaping gas. Without looking back, she walked swiftly from the room, closing the door behind her.

The cathedral clock chimed the last quarter before nine.

  When the bar closed at eleven-thirty, the crowd of people coming upstairs and chattering in loud voices would have awakened even the deepest sleeper. They woke James. He didn’t move for some time but lay there with his eyes open till he heard the clock chime midnight. When the last stroke died away he reached out and turn on the bedside lamp. The light was like knives going into his head, and he groaned. But he felt like this most nights at midnight and there was no use making a fuss. Who would hear or care if he did? Nina was
evidently still downstairs in that lounge. It was too much to hope she might stay there all night out of fear of being alone with him. No, she’d be up now the television had closed down and she’d start berating him for his drunkenness and his infidelity—not that there had been any since Frances—and they would lie there bickering and smarting until grey light mingled with that yellow light, and the cathedral clock told them it was dawn.

And yet she had been so sweet once, so pathetic and desperate in her sad failure. It had never occurred to him to blame her, though his body suffered. And his own solution, honestly confessed, might have worked so well for all three of them if she had been rational. He wondered vaguely, for the thousandth time, why he had been such a fool as to confess, when, with a little deception, he might be happier now than at any time in his marriage. But he was in no fit state to think. Where had that woman said the bathroom was? Turn right down the passage and the third door on the left. He lay there till the clock struck the quarter before he felt he couldn’t last out any longer and he’d have to find it.

The cold air in the passage—God, it was more like January than April—steadied him a little and made his head bang and throb. He must be crazy to go on like this. What the hell was he doing, turning himself into an alcoholic at thirty-five? Because there were no two ways about it, he was an alcoholic all right, a drunk. And if he stayed with Nina he’d be a dead alcoholic by forty. But how can you leave a woman who won’t leave you? Give up his job, run away, go to the ends of the earth…. It wasn’t unusual for him to have wild thoughts like this at midnight, but when the morning came he knew he would just soldier on.

He stayed in the bathroom for about ten minutes. Coming back along the passage, he heard footsteps on the stairs, and knowing he must look horrible and smell horribly of liquor, he retreated behind the open door of what proved to be a broom cupboard. But it was only his wife. She approached their room door slowly as if she were bracing herself to face something—
himself, probably, he thought. Had she really that much loathing of him that she had to draw in her breath and clench her hands before confronting him? She was very pale. She looked ill and frightened, and when she had opened the door and gone inside he heard her give a kind of shrill gasp that was almost a shriek.

He followed her into the room, and when she turned and saw him he thought she was going to faint. She had been pale before, but now she turned paper white. Once, when he had still loved her and had hoped he might teach her to love him, he would have been concerned. But now he didn’t care, and all he said was, “Been watching something nasty on the T.V.?”

She didn’t answer him. She sat down on her bed and put her head into her hands. James undressed and got into bed. Presently Nina got up and began taking her clothes off slowly and mechanically. His head and body had begun to twitch as they did when he was recovering from the effects of a drinking bout. It left him wide awake. He wouldn’t sleep again for hours. He watched her curiously but dispassionately, for he had long ago ceased to derive the slightest pleasure or excitement from seeing her undress. What intrigued him now was that, though she was evidently in some sort of state of shock, her hands shaking, she still couldn’t discard those modest subterfuges of hers, her way of turning her back when she stepped out of her dress, of pulling her nightgown over her head before she took off her underclothes.

She put on her dressing gown and went to the bathroom. When she came back her face was greasy where she had cleaned off the make-up and she was shivering.

“You’d better take a sleeping tablet,” he said.

“I’ve already taken one in the bathroom. I wanted a bath but there wasn’t any hot water.” Getting into bed, she exclaimed in her normal fierce way, “Nothing works in this damned place! Nothing goes right!”

“Put out the light and go to sleep. Anyone would think you’d got to spend the rest of your life here instead of just one night.”

She made no reply. They never said good night to each other. When she had put her light out the room wasn’t really dark because a street lamp was still lit in the alley outside. He had seldom felt less like sleep, and now he was aware of a sensation he hadn’t expected because he hadn’t thought about it. He didn’t want to share a bedroom with her.

That cold modesty, which had once been enticing, now repelled him. He raised himself on one elbow and peered at her. She lay in the defensive attitude of a woman who fears assault, flat on her stomach, her arms folded under her head. Although the sleeping pill had taken effect and she was deeply asleep, her body seemed stiff, prepared to galvanise into violence at a touch. She smelt cold. A sour saltiness emanated from her as if there were sea water in her veins instead of blood. He thought of real women with warm blood, women who awoke from sleep when their husband’s faces neared theirs, who never recoiled but smiled and put out their arms. For ever she would keep him from them until the drink or time made him as frozen as she.

Suddenly he knew he couldn’t stay in that room. He might do something dreadful, beat her up perhaps or even kill her. And much as he wanted to be rid of her, spend no more time with her, no more money on her, the notion of killing her was as absurd as it was grotesque. It was unthinkable. But he couldn’t stay here.

He got up and put on his dressing gown. He’d go to that lounge where she’d watched television, take a blanket, and spend the rest of the night there. She wouldn’t wake till nine and by then he’d be back, ready to dress for that wedding. Funny, really, their going to a wedding, to watch someone else getting into the same boat. But it wouldn’t be the same boat, for if office gossip was to be relied on, Sir William’s daughter had already opened her warm arms to many men….

The cathedral clock struck one. By nine the room would be icy and they’d need that gas fire. Why not put a fivepence piece in the meter now so that the fire would work when he wanted it?

The fire itself lay in shadow but the meter was clearly illuminated by the street lamp. James knelt down, trying to remember the instructions of the manageress. Better try it out first before he put his coin in, his only fivepence coin. Strange, that. He could have sworn he’d had two when he first went to bed.

What had that woman said? Turn the handle to the left, insert the coin, turn the handle to the right…. No, turn it to the right as far as it will go until
you hear the coin fall.
Keeping hold of his coin—he didn’t want to waste it if what Nina said was true and nothing worked in this place—he turned the handle to the left, then hard to the right as far as it would go.

Inside the meter a coin fell with a small dull clang. The red arrow marker on the gauge, which had stood at empty, moved along to register payment. Good. He was glad he hadn’t wasted his money. The previous guest must have put a coin in and failed to turn the handle until it fell. So Nina had been wrong about things not working. Still, it wasn’t unusual for her to get the wrong idea, not unusual at all….

Gas would come through now once the dial was switched on. James checked that the window was shut to keep out the cold, gave a last look at the sleeping, heavily sedated woman, and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.

The Chief was stretched out on the settee, half asleep. Monty sat opposite him, bolt upright in his chair. Neither of them moved as Dick helped himself to gin and water. They didn’t care for strong drink, the Chief not even for the smell of it, though it wasn’t his way to show his feelings. Monty would sometimes drink beer in the George Tavern with Dick. It was cigarette smoke that upset him, and now as he caught a whiff from Dick’s Capstan, he sneezed.

“Bless you,” said Dick.

Better smoke the rest of it in the kitchen while he was getting their supper. It wasn’t fair on Monty to start him coughing at his age, bring on his bronchitis maybe. There was nothing Dick wouldn’t have done for Monty’s comfort, but when he had taken the steak out of the fridge and gone once more into the sitting room for his drink, it was the Chief he addressed. Monty was his friend and the best company in the world. You couldn’t look on the Chief in that light, but more as a boss to be respected and deferred to.

“Hungry, Chief?” he said.

The Chief got off the settee and walked into the kitchen. Dick went after him. It was almost dark outside now but enough light remained to show Dick Monty’s coat, the old check one, still hanging on the clothesline. Better take it in in case it rained in the night. Dick went out into the yard, hoping against hope old Tom, his next-door neighbour, wouldn’t see the kitchen light and come out. Such hope was always vain. He’d got the first of the pegs out when he heard the door open and the cracked, whining voice.

“Going to be a cold night.”

“Mmm,” said Dick.

“Shouldn’t be surprised if there was to be a frost.”

Who cared? Dick saw the great angular shadow of the Chief appear in the rectangle of light. Good, that would fix him. Standing erect, as he now was against the fence, the Chief was
a good head taller than old Tom, who backed away, grinning nervously.

“Come on, Chief,” said Dick. “Suppertime.”

“Just like children, aren’t they?” old Tom whined. “Almost human, it’s uncanny. Look at him. He understands every word you say.”

Dick didn’t answer. He followed the Chief into the kitchen and slammed the door. Nothing angered him more than the way people thought they were paying compliments to animals by comparing them with people. As if the Chief and Monty weren’t in every way, mentally, physically, morally, a hundred times better than any human being he’d ever known. Just like children—what a load of crap. Children wanting their supper would be crying, making a nuisance of themselves, getting under his feet. His dogs, patient, stoical, single-minded, sat still and silent, watching while he filled the earthenware bowls with steak and meal and vitamin supplement. And when the bowls were placed side by side on the floor, they moved towards them with placid dignity.

Dick watched them feed. Monty’s appetite, at fourteen, was as good as ever, though he took longer about it than the Chief. His teeth weren’t what they had been. When the old dog had cleared his plate he did what he’d always done ever since he was a pup, came over to Dick and laid his grey muzzle in the palm of the outstretched hand. Dick fondled his ears.

“Good old dog,” Dick said. He scorned the popular way of calling dogs boy. They weren’t boys. Boys were dirty and smelly and noisy and uncontrolled. “You’re a cracker, you are. You’re a fine old dog.”

The Chief behaved in a grander manner. Such signs of affection and gratitude would have been inconsistent with his pedigree and his dignified presence. Dick and Monty knew their place and they both stepped aside to allow the Chief to pass majestically through the doorway and resume his position on the settee. Dick pushed Monty’s chair nearer to the radiator. Half past six. He finished his gin.

“I have to go out now,” he said, “but I’ll be back by ten at
the latest, so you get a bit of shut-eye and when I come back we’ll all have a good walk. O.K.?”

Monty came to the front door with him. He always had and always would, though his hind legs were stiff with rheumatism. We all have to get old, Dick thought; I’ll have to face up to it, I’m going to lose him this year or next…. He knelt down by the door and did what he’d never done to man, woman, or child—performed that disgusting act which sickened him when he saw it done by human beings to human beings. Holding Monty’s head in his hands, he pressed his lips to the wrinkled forehead. Monty wagged his tail and emitted little grunts of happiness. Dick closed the door and got his car out of the garage.