Bleeding Heart Square

me.

The whole business can’t have taken much more than a minute though it seemed to me that every second lasted an hour. I felt I was being smothered, though that was the least of my troubles. I had not expected him to be so rough. I had not expected it to hurt so much. Is this what it all means, what it all comes down to?

At least, I thought while he was doing it to me, he will never leave me now. He will be mine for ever. When he had finished, however, there were no signs of tenderness. He just patted my shoulder and said I was a good girl. Then he got out of bed, pulled on his trousers and walked up and down smoking a cigarette. I turned away and pretended to sleep. After a while, I actually heard him relieve himself in the pot. Then he whispered loudly to me that he was going down for a nightcap. I didn’t reply.

So here I am, writing by the dying fire. I don’t want to see anybody so I won’t ring for more coals. They are still talking downstairs, and I think he’s laughing at something. Laughing. I know it’s a sin, dear Jesus, but sometimes I wish I were dead.

When you finish reading this entry, you want to forget it at once and for ever. But instead you read it again. And again. That’s what hell means, perhaps, being compelled not just to live but to relive.

Rory might have ignored the smell for another day if it hadn’t been for the letter, which was from the editor of a small-circulation trade magazine specializing in hosiery. Through the medium of his secretary, the editor regretted to inform Rory that the post of junior feature writer had just been filled by another candidate so his, Rory’s, presence at an interview that afternoon would not after all be required. The editor regretted any inconvenience caused and wished Rory every success in his career.

Rory flung the letter in the waste-paper basket. Thursday now stretched in front of him, unattractively empty. He hadn’t had much hope of being offered the job, but at least going for an interview for it would have given him something to do other than combing the Situations Vacant in the library.

Since he had nothing better to do, he decided to investigate the smell. This had been puzzling him for the last thirty-six hours, during which time it had been growing steadily stronger and more unpleasant. It did not take him long to trace it to a tin of Argentinian corned beef, opened at the weekend, half-eaten and subsequently forgotten in the cupboard of the chiffonier under the window. He wrapped the tin in yesterday’s newspaper and stuffed it in the enamelled bucket used for kitchen rubbish. Leaving his windows wide open, he carried the bucket downstairs and into the little yard at the back of the house.

The sun never shone on this small rectangle of cracked and blackened flagstones, and probably never would. The yard smelled, and so did the contents of the dustbins that lined the walls. Tall buildings reared up on every side, and the inhabitants of all of them left their rubbish here. A narrow passageway running between number seven and the house next door provided shared access to the square.

Rory opened the nearest of the bins. It was three-quarters full — plenty of room for the contents of the bucket. He was about to upend the pail into the dustbin when a name caught his eye.

He looked into the bin. Narton. The name was on a newspaper wrapped around some rubbish. At least a third of the bundle was saturated with moisture, and the paper was dark and disintegrating, revealing wet tea leaves, fragments of tobacco, a cigar butt. When he tried to pick up the newspaper, the bundle fell apart completely. Fragments of newspaper came away in his hand. Rubbish spilled out. He glimpsed something underneath that made him cry out, something white and nightmarish.

Sanity took hold again. Yes, it was a skull, with the rakish horns of a goat. Rory lifted it gingerly from the bin. The horns were bleached and fissured like driftwood. Between them was a V-shaped ridge of bone, bisected vertically with an indentation like a frown. Much of the nose had collapsed, leaving a prow of sharp white spikes sheltering rolls of finer bone, perforated like lace. The eye sockets were vacant, seeing nothing, wanting nothing. He let the skull drop from his hand and back onto its bed of rubbish.

He pulled the remains of the newspaper from the dustbin. Narton’s name had caught his eye in a stop-press item at the bottom of a page.

RAWLING MAN DIES

On Monday evening, police were called to a house in Rawling following an unexpected fatality. The dead man is believed to be Herbert Narton, the house’s owner.

Rory unfolded what was left of the newspaper on the flagstones. The masthead was still intact: The Mavering Advertiser amp; Weekly Herald. Serridge must have brought it back after his last visit to Rawling.

He sat back on his heels and whistled. Narton dead? It didn’t seem possible. The poor devil had seemed well enough on Saturday in that tea shop near the British Museum. He tore out the stop-press item and dumped the rest of the newspaper in the bin.

The poor bloody chap. He was sorry that Narton was dead, even though he hadn’t much liked the man. It must have been very sudden. A heart attack, perhaps. What would happen now? Would one of Narton’s colleagues get in touch?

It was then that the idea came into Rory’s mind. He emptied the contents of his own pail into the bin and went back up to his flat. He smoked a cigarette and thought about the idea and its implications.

Why not? What else had he got to do?

By the time he reached the fork in the path, it was nearly lunchtime and Rory was growing hungry. Instead of turning right, as he had before, he turned left onto the path that would bring him more quickly to the village and the Alforde Arms. The fields on either side were three or four feet above the level of the path and bordered with lank hedgerows. After a few hundred yards, he glimpsed roofs through a gap in the right-hand hedge. He stopped to look. A field sloped gently up to a huddle of trees. On their right was a group of farm buildings. The chimneys of a house were visible above the trees.

Morthams Farm?

Movement caught his eyes. He was just in time to see a boy running along the hedge bordering the field. How long had the boy been there? Was someone watching the watcher?

Unsettled, Rory continued along the path and came eventually to a narrow road with large, muddy fields on either side. He turned right, in the direction of the village. Almost immediately he saw the cottage, which stood by itself in an overgrown garden; the gate from the road had fallen from its hinges and was lying on the verge, and the roof of a small lean-to building at the end had lost many of its slates. But a trickle of smoke rose from somewhere behind the house.

He paused by the gateway. Behind the strip of garden was a neglected orchard. A tall, gaunt woman was standing with her back to him among the trees, tending a bonfire. Despite the cold, she was wearing only a long, thin cotton dress with a faded floral print, covered with a stained apron.

‘Good morning,’ he called.

For a moment he thought the woman hadn’t heard him. He was about to repeat the greeting when she turned away from the fire. In her hand was a stick she had been using as a poker. She stared at Rory, who raised his hat.

‘Good morning. I’m looking for Mrs Narton.’

‘That’s me.’ The voice was harsh and low like a man’s.

‘I knew Sergeant Narton. Am I right in thinking he was your husband?’

She nodded.

‘I was so sorry to hear of your loss.’

‘He wasn’t a sergeant, though.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He wasn’t a sergeant,’ the woman repeated. ‘Not when he died.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘They took that away from him,’ Mrs Narton said. ‘Three and a half years ago. That and everything else. Cheated him out of his pension too.’ Stick in hand, she advanced through the ruined garden towards Rory, the skirts of her dress trailing through the long, wet grass. ‘Them devils at headquarters as good as killed him. I’d like to see them hang, every man jack of them. I know it’s a sin, but I would.’

‘But I thought he was in the police. Now, I mean. He said he was. That’s why I’ve come. I was going to-’