Buffet for Unwelcome Guests(107)

‘But that’s it,’ he said. ‘They won’t have me. I suppose they—sort of sense this other thing. I suppose I sort of—smell of it.’

‘There are—well, prostitutes.’ Poor sad girls, living so dangerously, taking such terrible risks. But…‘They would be easy; and I suppose kind?’

‘But not loving,’ he said. ‘And I want some love with it. That’s what I go about looking for. If… If, even after all the muck and the filth, the calls and all that—if one of them was just to bring herself to understand, if one of them really understood and forgave, really accepted that I’m—just an ordinary man, only with this sickness…’ He thought it over. ‘Quite a nice man, really, I suppose, as men go. Honest, dependable, decent—in all other ways, at any rate, decent. And kind, you know, considerate, good to my mother, there never was a better son, I don’t suppose.’

‘I think you are nice,’ she said. ‘I think you’re right. You’re just a—a nice, ordinary man; only you’re ill, you need help.’

‘That’s right,’ he said. ‘I need help. And what help can I look for now, except from a woman? I think if I found that, I could begin life all over again, I really do. But till then…

Till then! She started to move, edging her way along the dresser, her hands spread out behind her, feeling their way along the polished ledge. It brought him sharply out of his absorption. He said: ‘That’s no use. If you think you’re going to get to the door, get away from me—I’m afraid that’s no use. I wouldn’t want to kill you, not like that poor girl; or harm you, like some of the others. I mean, I like you, I like you very much, no one else has ever been so kind as you have, listening and understanding. But that won’t stop me. You could be an angel out of heaven and it wouldn’t stop me. When the fit’s on me, I can’t help myself. And it’s on me now.’

‘My husband—’ she faltered.

‘Your husband won’t be home for hours. You know that. He was ringing you from Hampshire.’ He said again, in his humble, earnest way: ‘I don’t want anything—dirty. Just what any man wants.’

She knew now what she must do. It was terrifying, hideous, dangerous—but there was nothing else for it. She had pulled herself together, the room no longer swam about her, her hands grew steady, dropping from the ledge, hanging motionless at her sides, resistance-less. She said, ‘I understand. You can’t help it; you can’t help yourself. And neither can I help myself. Neither of us can.’ And she tore herself from the shelter of the dresser and, moving very slowly, went towards him.

He did not stir, just stood there waiting for her. But she saw with a sort of heartbreak that his whole face had become transfigured with an incredulous, inarticulate, grateful joy.

She’d had no idea where to strike. Simply, the sharp kitchen knife thrust itself in and to a vital spot. She found herself weeping, kneeling over him as he lay there, harmless now and pitiful in his harmlessness. So terrible a price to have exacted from him! She and all those other women—if they could but have been ‘easy and kind’. Easy and kind—understanding, forgiving, ‘even a little bit loving’. But they could not; and she found herself weeping, kneeling there beside him, sobbing it out to the upturned, trustful face. ‘I didn’t mean to kill you! I had to save myself, I had to save all those other girls to come. The knife was there on the dresser. But I didn’t mean it to kill you…’

After all—except for that one thing, he had seemed such a nice man.





The Whispering


SHE LEANED AGAINST THE counter and the empty glass made a tiny chattering against the mahogany with the shaking of her ringless left hand. They were whispering about her over there in the corner. She said so to the barman. ‘They’re whispering about me over there.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ he said. ‘You always think people are whispering.’

‘Why do they whisper? Why don’t they just talk to me straight out?’

‘Perhaps they don’t wish to talk to you straight out,’ he said, ‘or any other way. And I’ll be frank with you—neither do I.’

Tears welled up into her large blue eyes. She said with maudlin dignity: ‘In future I’ll go to some other bar.’

‘You do that,’ he said, ‘God knows we’re fed up with you in here.’

But she stayed. She always stayed. Where ever else she went, it would be the same. ‘It was all such a long time ago,’ she said to the man. ‘Why should they whisper still?’