'Mr Millar might be always on the move, always running away. And going through the hoops in the attempt to forget. Through all the hoops he can find. Even asking me down for a drink.'
'Still like 40 years on,' said Maureen's husband. 'But you mustn't let me philosophize. It's probably only that I'm not being a wild success myself. Why do you call him
I could see that it might irritate an Harrovian. But my answer, though a mere inspiration of the moment, I rather liked. 'To link him with the rest of the world. He's one who needs it.'
'I see,' said Maureen's husband. 'I'll think about what you've told me. I've never doubted that old Millar was a dead loss. I suppose I've kept away from him for that reason. Of course we're not in a position to move just at the moment. You might say that the tangible factors outweigh the intangible. So forgive me if I don't offer to sit up with you waiting for the line of nameless horrors.' His expression changed. 'You will forgive me? To start with, I can't leave the kids and I can hardly bring them with me.'
'I never even thought of it,' I replied; which was true.
'If you come screaming down the stairs at any time, don't hesitate to knock me up. Knock hard, because I sleep hard after slogging all day at the filthy shop. Besides it might scare away the apparitions.'
I should perhaps have been grateful for a slightly different attitude, but one had to take the man as he obviously was. I attempted one more word.
'I see it's no business of mine, but I do sincerely advise against staying long in the same house with those people upstairs. If they were to go, of course it would be different.'
'It might not, of course, from what you say. But the real trouble is that there's always something. Not just something wrong, but something badly wrong. I can see that Millar's got on your nerves and I don't blame you either. But if you'd ever lived in some of the places that Maureen and I have lived in since I was invalided out. . Believe me, my friend, there's always something that's bloody about living among the toiling masses. From my point of view this place is a real oasis. You may see what I mean, when you start looking for somewhere else. Mind if I get the kids down again?'
'I'll go,' I said. 'Thank you for listening.'
'Any time,' he said. 'Always a friendly bosom on which to lay the troubled head. I'll tell Maureen you looked in. When she's more compos, that is.
'
Needless to say, Maureen's husband proved to be almost gruesomely in the right of it. I could find nowhere else to live that was even possible; and I found much on offer that was quite horrible. That was after spending almost the whole of the next week in the search; regardless of my duties to Major Valentine. A week does not sound very long, but it is surprising how many small, dark cavities six days can unearth.
In any case, the unit of a week was critical. I should have liked at least to be sure of having somewhere else to go before having to face another Saturday and Sunday.
Messrs Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp seemed to be carrying on as usual, though as I was out of the house for the greater part of each day, it was impossible for me to be sure. On the Thursday night, Mr Millar was beating it up with three noisy girls until the dawn was filtering through my windows, grey as Maureen's dress.
I decided that I could not face the Saturday and Sunday nights. On the Saturday evening, I retreated to my mother, after spending a long day visiting a list of impossible addresses (many of them stated to be accessible on a Saturday only — often on a Saturday afternoon only, perhaps between two and four).
'What a surprise!' exclaimed my mother. 'I wasn't sure I should ever see you again.'
And when, against some reluctance on my part as well as against the usual resistance on my mother's, I returned to Brandenburg Square in the later part of the Monday morning, I found a transformation.
In the first place, I had to open the street door with my key. This was unknown during 'business hours': the staff of Messrs Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp, and their sporting friends, pushed in and out so incessantly that a locked front door would have been ludicrous. It would have been entirely out of harmony with the firm's way of life and what would now be called 'image'.
Within all was quiet. All the room doors were shut, which was also quite unknown. This time I applied myself to several of the handles with confidence. Every door I tried was locked.
I put down my canvas bag and went outside again, the front door swinging shut behind me on its heavy spring.
The firm's unusually large brass plate had gone. Even the phantom shape of it was fainter than usual in these cases; the firm having been with us for so much less than the customary (or then customary) 40 or 80 years. I picked a bit at the screwholes, but nothing peeped out. I stood back and looked up at the windows of the house. All were shut, but there was nothing unusual about that. I had never noticed an open window on the floors occupied by Messrs Stallabrass, Hoskins and Cramp. I reflected that it would be no use enquiring in the basement, as Maureen's husband would be at the provisions shop. (I wondered for the first time who was nowadays collecting the children from school.) As people were now staring at me, I gave the front door a push and re-entered.
Maureen stood halfway up the first flight of stairs, as if awaiting me.
She wore a white blouse that some of my mother's generation would have called 'skimpy', and a bright red skirt, and equally bright red shoes. Her stockings gently gleamed, her hair positively shone, and her face was nothing less than radiant.
'All silent as the tomb,' she said.
'Maureen!' I cried and hugged her and kissed her. It was impossible to do anything else.
'Suddenly,' she said. 'Quite suddenly. During the weekend. I was very ill, you know, Roy, and then almost at once I was all right. It was yesterday, and I've been in a bit of a trance ever since. I've spent this morning buying clothes that we really can't afford, and having my hair done, and just sitting in the square, and smiling at everything.'
I kissed her again.
'How long have this lot been gone?' she went on. 'Gilbert's departed for the weekend and taken the children. Thought I was safely shut away. What's he up to, I wonder?'
'This lot were here when I left on Saturday. Come upstairs, Maureen.'
We went up arm in arm, even though I was carrying my canvas bag.
At Mr Millar's own floor, we stopped, and, for the hell of it, I tried the handle of Mr Millar's own outer door, the door into the pink room with the cornice of flowers. This time, the door opened.
I tried to push Maureen out, but I failed. Mr Millar was hanging there, in the outer office for all to see; and from a large hook, meant for hanging overcoats on a wall, which he, or someone, must have spent much time screwing into the plaster of the ceiling, or rather, I imagine, through the ceiling into one of the wooden joists of my floor above. The most curious thing was that though there was no detectable movement of air in the room, the body swung back and forth quite perceptibly, as if it had been made of
A curious thing of another kind was that though, for a long time, I had been scared out of my wits by events in the house (and Maureen perhaps literally so), yet from quite soon after that climactic Sunday, I began to feel reasonably happy there almost all the time, indeed very happy indeed when I thought about Maureen or covered her sweet hair with kisses; and entirely forgot the idea of moving, or as entirely as life ever permits one to forget anything.
The Clock Watcher
Now that it has all come to an end, so that even the police are 'making enquiries', I am trying to keep myself occupied for a little by writing out a story that no one will ever believe. Or no one just yet. Possibly some new Einstein will come to my rescue, sooner or later; and prove by theory what I have learned by experience. That sort of theory is thought up about every second year nowadays, though none of the theories make much difference to ordinary people's lives.
Perhaps I never was quite an ordinary person, after all. Perhaps I ceased being ordinary when I married
