4
'If it rains,' George had said to Brant, looking at the mass of black cloud slowly creeping across the sky, 'we shan't be able to work tonight. It's no good calling on people if you're dripping wet. They don't ask you in, and just try selling anything standing on a doorstep with rain running down the back of your neck.'
Well, it was raining all right. From his bedroom window George looked down at the deserted street, the pavements black and shiny with rain, and water running in the gutters.
It was a few minutes past six. The little, dingy room was dark and chilly. George had moved the armchair to the window so that he had at least something to look at. It was extraordinary how lonely this room could be. No one seemed to be moving in the house. George supposed that Ella and Mrs Rhodes were in the basement preparing supper. The other boarders seldom came in before seven o'clock: that was the time when George went out. He had the house, as far as he knew, to himself.
He decided that the results of the afternoon's work had been satisfactory. On the mantelpiece was a packet of names and addresses neatly mounted on card and sorted into 'walking order'. All good calls.
George was rather pleased that it was raining. It would be nice to have an evening off. He had done well the previous evening, and he was three pounds in hand. If he did no further work that week, he would still be all right. At half past six, he decided, he would go over to the King's Arms and spend the evening in his favourite corner. He liked the atmosphere of the pub. He was quite content to remain there until closing time, watching the lively activity, listening to the snatches of conversation and seeing Gladys cope, astonishingly efficient, with the constant demand for drinks Perhaps he would be lucky tonight and find someone who would talk to him He would have his supper there, and when closing time came he would have an early night.
After staring out of the window for several minutes, he became bored with the rain-swept, deserted street, and, leaving his armchair, he crossed the room to his dressing- table. Pulling open the bottom drawer, he fumbled beneath his spare shirts and underwear until his hand closed over a cardboard box. He took the box hack to the window and sat down, placing the box carefully on his knee.
As he was about to lift the lid of the box, he heard a distinct noise, as if someone were pushing at his door.
An extraordinary expression of guilt and fright crossed his heavy features. Springing quickly to his feet, he thrust the box out of sight under the chair cushion. He stood listening, his head on one side and his eyes half closed. Again the door creaked. Cautiously, noiselessly, he walked to the door and jerked it open. Leo came languidly into the room, glanced up at him with enormous yellow eyes and then leapt up onto the bed.
'Hello, old son,' George said, closing the door. 'You gave me quite a fright.'
He stroked the cat for several minutes. His thick, gentle fingers probed the cat's body, moving caressingly over its head, into the hollow of its shoulder blades, under its chin.
The cat remained still, its eyes closed and its sleek body vibrating as it purred.
The room seemed to George to be suddenly cosy now that he was no longer alone. The rain against the window no longer looked depressing. He was grateful to Leo for coming all the way from the basement to see him, and, bending down, he rubbed his face against the cat's long fur.
Leo rolled on its side, stretched, touched his face lightly with its paw, its claws carefully sheathed. When at last it had settled itself on the bed in a big, furry ball, George returned to his chair He recovered the cardboard box from under the cushion and sat down again. A glance round the room, a glance out into the darkening street and a moment to listen, assured him that he would not be disturbed. Then he opened the box and took from it a heavy Luger pistol. As his hand closed over the long wooden and metal butt, his face lit up. He laid the box on the floor at his side and examined the pistol as if he had never seen it before. The cat watched him with sleepy, bored eyes.
George's foster father had brought this Luger pistol back from France as a souvenir of the Battle of the Somme It was in perfect working order, and with it was a box of twenty-five cartridges.
For years George had coveted this pistol. Twice he had been soundly thrashed when caught handling it. But nothing could discourage his desire to own it. As he grew up, the desire increased. As his imagination became more vivid and the roles he selected for himself to play in his mind-fantasies became more violent, so the desire to possess this exciting weapon became more unbearable.
When he heard that his foster father had been knocked down and killed by a speeding car, George had no feeling of shock, nor of loss. He received the news in silence, thinking that now, at last, the pistol would be his.
He vividly remembered the scene. The fat, red-faced police sergeant who was doing his best to break the news as gently as his clumsy tongue could manage, his foster mother's white, frightened face and his own feeling of pending calamity.
'Dead,' the police sergeant had said. 'Very painful business, Ma'am. Perhaps you'd come to the 'ospital . . .'
George was fourteen at the time He knew what death meant. He knew that the man who had acted as his father would never again come into the little dark hall, hang up his hat and coat and call, as he always called, 'Anyone in?' He would never again say, looking round the door, a frown on his fat, heavy face, 'Put that damn pistol down. How many more times do I have to tell you not to touch it?' It meant that the pistol was now without an owner. His foster mother had never taken any interest in it. She probably would never think of it, never ask for it. So, while the police sergeant was still muttering and mumbling, George had slipped from the room and gone directly to the place where the pistol was concealed. He would never forget the ecstatic surge of emotion that had flowed through him as he carried the cardboard box from his foster father's room to his own. For thirteen years the pistol had remained George's most cherished possession.
Every day he found time to take the pistol from its box. He cleaned it, polished its black metal and removed and replaced its magazine. It gave George an immense feeling of superiority to hold this heavy weapon in his hand. He would imagine with satisfaction how those who had been rude to him during his evening's work would react if they were suddenly confronted with this pistol. He pictured Mr Eccles' reaction if he had produced the Luger, and the horror and fear that would have come to the big, flat face with its ridiculous blond moustache.
George's finger curled round the trigger, and his face became grim.
