Assassins and Victims Read online

  And then a door was opened and the hall was suddenly alight.

  ‘On a midnight prowl, Eric?’ Agnes asked.

  I closed my eyes. This time she didn’t have any clothes on at all.

  Still with my eyes closed I said,

  ‘It’s Rex, I can’t sleep.’

  And then I turned away and went quickly back upstairs. When I reached the landing I could hear her laugh. I closed the door of my room. The room was filled with the noise of Rex.

  I lay down on the bed and pulled the pillow over my head. But that wasn’t any good. I couldn’t get rid of the sound. I couldn’t get rid of it.

  5

  I fell asleep on the bus to Park Royal with the result that I went past my stop. I woke up, realised what had happened, and rang the bell. The conductor became very annoyed.

  ‘Thass my job, mister, thass not your job,’ he said.

  When the bus stopped I jumped off and ran all the way to the factory. I’d never been late before. I was proud of my timecard, because I always clocked on with at least eight minutes to spare. I knew, you see, that King himself looked at all the cards every week, and he had only to glance at mine to see how keen I was. Then, if there was any promotion going, I’d stand a good chance. Not that I was discontented with what I was doing, far from it, but you’ve got to be shrewd enough to look for opportunities. So I clocked on with eight minutes to spare with good reason.

  The gatekeeper asked me if I couldn’t get out of the nest that morning. I punched my time. It was eight-twenty. I was twenty minutes late. I didn’t stop to ask him what he meant by ‘nest’. I hurried into my overalls and went to the belt. I stand at Number Three in Section Ten. Section Ten is packing, corrugated packing, and Number Three is the square in which I stand.

  I worked extra hard until the tea break at ten and when I went into the canteen Benito came up to me and said,

  ‘The gay life, it is killing you, Eric.’

  I stirred my tea and didn’t answer. He laughed and punched me on the spine but I didn’t want him to see that he’d hurt me. And then Nigel and Charlie came over. They were giggling together.

  ‘King’s looking for you,’ Charlie said. Charlie’s a big broad man with fair hair and freckles. ‘He wants to see you on the double.’

  ‘You’re for the high jump,’ Nigel said.

  My hand began to shake. I didn’t really believe them, because they’d been giggling. Sometimes I think they take me for a fool. But I couldn’t stop my hand shaking.

  ‘You’re trembling,’ Charlie said. ‘You’ve been abusing yourself again, haven’t you?’

  ‘You haven’t been reading your Baden-Powell, have you?’ Nigel asked.

  ‘That’s very naughty,’ Charlie said. ‘You should read two chapters every night, Eric, you naughty boy.’

  ‘What does King want me for?’ I asked. I didn’t believe a word of it.

  ‘He gets thirsty,’ said Nigel. ‘He wants some of your blood.’

  ‘You’re having me on,’ I said.

  ‘Cross my heart,’ Charlie said. ‘He was looking for you only a moment ago. You’ve got to go upstairs at once.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I began to tell them that I’d fallen asleep on the bus, but Nigel said that I could pull the other leg. I finished my tea. Now they were looking serious. I got up from the table.

  ‘You’d better hurry, mate,’ Charlie said.

  ‘You don’t want to keep King waiting,’ Nigel said.

  I went upstairs to King’s office. I still didn’t really believe them, but they seemed serious. King has a little office with a window that looks into the factory floor. Sometimes you can see his face there, staring down at his workers. Sometimes you can see him bent over his desk.

  He had a new secretary that morning. His secretaries seem to come and go very quickly. They never stay longer than a month.

  ‘Mr King,’ I said.

  She was chewing a pencil. She didn’t even look at me. She just nodded her head towards King’s door. I went straight through.

  King was sitting behind his desk. He was wearing his boiler suit and looking at some large sheets of blue paper that were spread out in front of him. They looked like maps or diagrams.

  ‘You wanted me to see you, Mr King,’ I said.

  He’s a very big man with a huge stomach that comes out from the rest of his body, as if he’s got a pillow stuffed up there. It doesn’t look genuine. He has great hands that are grimy and his face is covered with spots and pocks. He looked up at me after a minute and narrowed his eyes.

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.

  ‘I stand at Number Three in Section Ten, Mr King,’ I said.

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’ he asked.

  ‘Corrugated packing.’

  ‘Why should I want to see you?’

  ‘I was twenty minutes late this morning,’ I said. ‘I know you’ll see that for yourself when you look at the timecards, but I’d like to explain.’

  He brought his two large hands together with a thump. I started to tell him about Rex and about how he barked, keeping me from sleeping, and how he was just pining for his dead master, Mr Peluzzi, who had dropped dead not long ago. I told him that the situation would change in the near future when Rex got over his loss. I was going to tell him about Agnes and how she went around without clothes on, but I stopped myself in time. I managed to explain how I was sensitive to noise. I got the impression all this time that he wasn’t really listening, because while I was speaking he picked up his telephone and dialled a number and started to talk to the person at the other end of the line. However, I kept talking until I’d finished.

  He put his telephone down and stared at his papers. I could see that he was really concentrating on them, his forehead was damp and his face was tight, and I could feel something of his tremendous energy and dedication. For a moment I wished that he would give me the chance to show him that I could concentrate just as hard, that I could be a great asset to the firm. But just then the hooter sounded and the machines started to work again.

  He looked up.

  ‘Jesus Christ, are you still here?’ he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say to him. I thought he had been aware of me in the office. I started to move towards the door.

  ‘Leave,’ he said.

  His secretary was slurping coffee and staring at her fingers. She glanced at me, twisted her mouth, and then blew her nose on a piece of tissue. I went downstairs to the lavatory.

  Seeing King at work had impressed me. He was so single-minded. It was the same kind of approach that I gave to putting the pieces of corrugated, folded with a one-inch overlap, into the cardboard boxes.

  While I was doing up the tin buttons of my overalls, I saw that my name had been written on the lavatory wall. The writing said: Who has the biggest cock in the factory? ERIC BILLINGS HAS.

  Benito could have written it. Or Nigel, or Charlie. I tried to rub it off with my sleeve but it only looked worse afterwards. I couldn’t imagine any of them writing the same thing about Mr King.

  I went back to my place and worked hard for the rest of the day.

  Sometimes you can find some kind of escape in your work.

  6

  I fried three sausages that night for my supper. After I’d eaten and washed up, Roderick came into my room. He was carrying a brown paper bag.

  ‘I’ve got the earplugs you wanted,’ he said.

  He opened the bag and brought out a piece of wire that had corks at each end.

  ‘My friend’s prepared to let them go for five bob,’ he said.

  ‘How do I know if they’re any good,’ I said. I had the measure of Roderick. He might be an intellectual, but he didn’t have my shrewdness. ‘They might be hopeless.’

  He stood in the centre of the floor looking up and down the walls.

  ‘They should be very effective,’ he said. He began to play with his moustache. ‘My friend recommends them highly.’

  I gav
e him two half-crowns. ‘If they don’t work, I want my money back,’ I said. I examined the earplugs closely. The thin wire was twisted in places and the corks were crumbling. They didn’t look too promising. But I would have tried anything.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, and went over to the window and looked out. He began to tap his fingers against the glass. After a bit I asked him to stop doing this. I explained that I was sensitive to noises.

  He said that he was sorry but he didn’t stop his tapping. He then explained that he was a compulsive tapper and that he’d tap any kind of surface just so long as it was smooth to touch.

  ‘I’m neurotic, actually,’ he said.

  Of course, I’d known all along, from the very first, that there was something wrong with him. And now he had come out with it. After a time he moved away from the window and looked at one or two things that were on the mantelpiece.

  ‘I’m also a nosy bastard,’ he said.

  ‘These plugs don’t look up to much,’ I said.

  Roderick sighed. It was a deep sort of sound, as if it had come from his belly and travelled a long way upwards.

  ‘My neurosis manifests itself in (a) an unwillingness to work, (b) in an intense curiosity about the trivia of other lives and (c) in window-tapping.’ He sat down on the bed and sagged. His head fell forward between his shoulders. He reminded me of a stuffed vulture I’d seen in a museum.

  ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’ I asked.

  ‘You can get me one, certainly, but a fat lot of good it would do,’ he said.

  I stared at the earplugs. Had I been too harsh on him? I straightened the wire out and said, ‘Well, you never know, these might just do the trick. I could put some sticking plaster on the corks, though.’

  Roderick said, ‘I can’t see what life is all about. And because I can’t find a purpose, I’m inclined to suppose that everything is absurd. Your earplugs, for instance.’ He started to laugh. His head shook up and down. ‘Originally they were part of a mobile that my friend was transporting to a festival of avant-garde sculpture. But they fell off and he used them as earplugs. That’s absurd, don’t you think?’

  ‘Ah, well,’ I said. ‘This is really a fine piece of wire.’

  He tapped his fingers on his knees and then got to his feet. He was clever, but I felt quite sorry for him. He stood in the doorway a moment just looking at me.

  ‘If the earplugs don’t work, you might try strangling the animal,’ he said.

  After he’d gone, I thought about his last remark. It shocked me. It really did. All right, I didn’t like Rex. But I didn’t wish him any harm. He didn’t realise that his noises disturbed me. He was only a dog, after all, a dumb animal.

  I walked to the window and looked down. He was slurping water from his bowl. Sometimes he stopped and his ears would prick up and he would listen to something. I read somewhere that dogs can hear very high sounds that humans can’t and that you can buy special whistles that only dogs can hear. Perhaps Rex heard things that I couldn’t. When he pricked his ears I couldn’t hear a thing. There was only silence. What was he listening to? I wondered.

  Then Mrs Peluzzi came into the yard. And she did something very odd.

  She got down on her knees and held her arms out and let Rex jump up against her breasts. He was licking her face and moaning a bit and she was burying her hair into his neck. It didn’t look quite right to me. There was something strange in the whole business. Rex might have been a man, not a dog, the way she was behaving. Then she took out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes. She got to her feet and pushed the dog away. Rex whimpered a bit and then went back to slurping his water and Mrs Peluzzi went indoors.

  After that I put on my coat for my evening stroll.

  It started to rain when I left the house. I walked to the café in Cricklewood Lane and went inside to have a cup of tea.

  I saw Bayonet sitting at a table in the far corner. When I went over to him he didn’t seem very pleased to see me at first.

  He asked, ‘Well, me old son, how’s yer new billet?’

  I told him about the dog. He shook his head.

  ‘That’s too bad, too bad,’ he said. ‘Still, it can’t go on forever, can it? Eh? Eh?’

  He began to nudge me with his elbow. It’s an irritating habit, especially when you’re trying to drink tea.

  He took a little flask from his pocket and poured some liquid into his coffee.

  ‘That’s the way the Irish drink it,’ he said. He lit a cigarette and blew his smoke into my face.

  ‘Otherwise,’ I said, ‘the room suits me. You see, I’ve had fourteen rooms in the last two years and I’m determined to settle down in this one. It gets very tiresome changing all the time.’

  ‘Of course it does,’ he said.

  ‘Everything would be fine, except for that dog.’

  ‘The dog, yes.’ He was fidgeting with his cup. Then he looked at his watch. ‘Well, I must be off.’ He got up and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘By the way, I’d be obliged if you didn’t mention to my little sister that you’d seen me.’

  And then he went out into the street. As I finished my tea, I thought it a bit odd that he didn’t want me to speak to Agnes. It’s customary, after all, to pass messages on to your relatives when you meet somebody in a position to do so. Still, it was no skin off my nose, as they say.

  I left the café and walked home.

  I was feeling very tired so I undressed and got into bed. I must have fallen asleep straight off. The next thing I remember is waking up at midnight and hearing Rex. His noise isn’t like the sound a train makes. With trains, you can forget the noise, because somehow it just seems to melt into the background and after a bit you don’t really hear it. But with Rex it was totally different. The noise he made was as irritating as a rash on the skin that you have to keep scratching all the time. You can’t just ignore it.

  I put on the earplugs. I had to stretch the wire a bit first. Roderick’s friend must have had a tiny head. I pushed the corks into my ears, but this was painful when I tried to lie on my side. And I can’t sleep on my back. Whenever I do I seem to get bad dreams. Anyway, pieces of the corks were breaking off and going down inside my ears, tickling me.

  I pulled the blankets over my head, but I found it hard to breathe. So I turned on the light and sat on the edge of the bed. I was beginning to feel desperate by this time. In spite of the plugs I could still hear Rex clearly. I went over to the window and pushed it open.

  ‘Be quiet! Be quiet!’ I shouted down.

  There was silence for a split second. In the reflection of the lamp in the lane, I could make out the dog’s dark shape moving around below. He wasn’t silent for very long. He started up again, worse than before.

  ‘Hush! Hush!’ I said, thinking he might understand that a bit better.

  But he didn’t. He was leaping up at the wall, whining, and his chain was clanking and his paws were scraping the stone. I felt like killing him for the first time. I felt like going down there with a hammer and striking him again and again. I ripped the earplugs off my head and threw them down. They hit the wall and dropped down on Rex’s side. There was silence while he sniffed the corks and I could hear him chew them and then spit out the pieces. He stared up at my window. His eyes were shining green and blue in the light.

  I pulled the window shut, turned off the light and went back to bed. But it was no good. It was hopeless, hopeless. I tried to think of something I could do. I thought of throwing down a piece of drugged meat, but I knew nothing about drugs, and anyway he might be suspicious and not eat it. I was desperate. What could I do? What could I do? This was worse than cabbage soup or flushing cisterns.

  I didn’t fall asleep until it was dawn.

  7

  When you’re used to sleeping eight hours at a time it comes as a bit of a shock to your system when your sleep is interrupted all the time. You start to get nervy and jumpy and you wake with a sore head. The next morning I didn’t open my eyes until half
-past nine. I’d slept right through the alarm. I started to get out of bed quickly. With some luck I could get into the factory at ten. But somehow all my energy had deserted me. I lay down again and stared up at the ceiling, my eyes wide open. I could telephone the personnel manager and say that I was sick. I couldn’t go to the factory in this condition, and I couldn’t go late two mornings running.

  It was best, I thought, not to go at all.

  I dressed slowly and boiled water for tea. I was just sitting down to drink it when Agnes came to the door. She was wearing her black dress and had her red hair tied up on the top of her head with a pink clasp.

  ‘Eric, you’re late,’ she said.

  ‘I’m taking the day off,’ I said. I explained that I’d had a bad night.

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said and sat down on the unmade bed.

  ‘And there’s no point in going at this hour,’ I said.

  ‘Do you want me to phone your work, love? I’m a good liar. I’ll say you’ve got diarrhoea if you like.’

  ‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said.

  ‘I’ve been making excuses all my life,’ she answered.

  She smoked a cigarette and watched me drink my tea. I would have offered her a cup, except I didn’t really want her to stay. I wanted to be on my own. I still felt dead tired.

  I said, ‘I think I must speak to Mrs Peluzzi.’

  ‘Will that do you any good?’ she said. ‘You’ve got to remember that she’s in mourning and that she’s Italian. She might get annoyed and that wouldn’t get you anywhere, would it?’ She paused a moment and looked round for an ashtray. ‘Are you sure you’re not exaggerating all this a little?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m telling you the truth.’

  ‘Oh, well, I suppose you must have a word with her then. But I’ve got a feeling she won’t listen to you. She’s a funny sort of bird.’

  I yawned. I’d been yawning ever since she came in. And my eyelids felt like lead. I could feel them begin to droop.

  She asked for the telephone number of the factory and I told her. Then she went downstairs and I could hear her speak. I was beginning to doze off when she came back.