‘Telephone the police when you have cut the cord. Dial 999 and ask to speak to a sergeant. Tell him the honest truth.’
Edward walked from the room and descended the stairs of the house. He opened the front door and crossed Dunfarnham Avenue, to the house of Mrs Mayben. He rang the bell, standing to one side so that his sister, from the dining-room window, would be able to see the old woman when she opened the door.
‘I was trying to repair this thing,’ said Mrs Mayben, holding out an electric fuse, ‘with a piece of silver paper. You’ve been sent to me, Mr Tripp. Come in.’
Edward entered the house of Mrs Mayben, carrying the ham knife. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘to bother you.’ But Mrs Mayben seemed not to question his presence on her property. ‘My husband could mend a fuse,’ she said, ‘with silver paper; yet I can make no hand of this.’ Edward placed the ham knife on a table in the hall and took the ineffective fuse from her hand. He said there was stuff called fuse wire, and Mrs Mayben led him to a cupboard where the electric meters were and in which he discovered the wire he sought. ‘I was cooking a chop,’ said Mrs Mayben, a woman of eighty-two, ‘when all the heat went off.’
‘I was cutting ham,’ said Edward, ‘and I was interrupted too.’ He repaired the fuse and replaced it in its socket. ‘Let’s go and see,’ said Mrs Mayben, and led the way to her kitchen. They watched the chop for a moment, still and uninviting in the centre of a frying pan on the electric stove. In a moment a noise came from it, a spurt of sizzling that indicated to them that Edward had been successful with the fuse. ‘You must take a glass of sherry,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I have one always myself, on Sundays.’
Edward followed the old woman to her sitting-room and sat down, since she wished that he should, in a comfortable armchair. She poured two glasses of Dry Fly sherry and then, holding hers formally in the air, she reminded Edward that she had lived in Dunfarnham Avenue for fourteen years and had never actually spoken to him before.
‘I see you feeding the birds,’ said Edward, ‘from your sitting-room window.’
‘Yes, I feed the local sparrows,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I do my bit.’
A silence fell between them, and then Mrs Mayben said:
‘It is odd to have lived opposite you for all these years and yet not to have spoken. I have seen you at the windows, as you have seen me. I have seen the lady too.’
Edward felt the blood moving into his face. He felt again a sickness in his stomach and thought his hands were shivering.
‘You have heard of me,’ he casually said. ‘I dare say you have. I am notorious in Dunfarnham Avenue.’
‘I know your name is Tripp,’ said Mrs Mayben. ‘I know no more.’
‘She is my sister, the woman you see in that house. She and I were born there, and now she never leaves it. I go out to do the shopping – well, you’ve seen me.’
‘I have seen you, certainly,’ said Mrs Mayben, ‘returning from the shops with a string bag full of this and that, potatoes and tins, lettuces in season. I do not pry, Mr Tripp, but I have seen you. Have more sherry?’
Edward accepted another glass. ‘I am known to every house in the road,’ he said. ‘Parents warn their children to cross to the other side when they see me coming. Men have approached me to issue rough warnings, using language I don’t much care to hear. Women move faster when Edward Tripp’s around.’
Mrs Mayben said that she was not deaf but wondered if she quite understood what Edward was talking about. ‘I don’t think I follow,’ she said. ‘I know nothing of all this. Like your sister, I don’t go out much. I’ve heard nothing from the people of Dunfarnham Avenue about you, Mr Tripp, or how it is you have become notorious.’
Edward said he had guessed that might be so, and added that one person at least in Dunfarnham Avenue should know the truth, on this Sabbath day.
‘It’s very kind of you to have repaired my fuse,’ said Mrs Mayben a little loudly. ‘I’m most obliged to you for that.’ She rose to her feet, but did not succeed in drawing her visitor to his. Edward sat on in the comfortable armchair holding his sherry glass. He said:
‘It is a hell for me, Dunfarnham Avenue, walking down it and feeling all eyes upon me. I have rung the bells of the houses. I have trumped up some story on the doorsteps, even on the doorsteps she cannot see from the dining-room window. She always knows if I have talked to someone and have been embarrassed: I come back in a peculiar state. I suffer from nerves, Mrs Mayben.’
‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Mayben more loudly still. ‘And how nice to meet you after all these years.’
‘I am going to tell you the truth,’ explained Edward, ‘as I have never told a soul in my life. It is an ugly business, Mrs Mayben. Perhaps you should sit down.’
‘But, Mr Tripp,’ protested the old woman, greatly puzzled, ‘what on earth is all this?’
‘Let me tell you,’ said Edward, and he told her of his sister standing at the top of the stairs while their mother broke to her the news that her two coloured story-books had been handed out to a beggar at the front door. ‘He’s only little,’ their mother had explained to Edward’s sister. ‘Forgive an imp, my dear.’ But Emily had not found it in her heart to forgive him and he had sniggered at the time.
‘I see,’ said Mrs Mayben.
‘I knew you would,’ cried Edward, smiling at her and nodding his head several times. ‘Of course you see. You have a kindly face; you feed the birds.’
‘Yes, but –’ said Mrs Mayben.
‘No,’ said Edward. ‘Listen.’
He told her about the woman in red at the funeral of their mother, the woman his sister had seen, and how he afterwards prayed in the back garden and had been sternly answered by Almighty God. He explained how he had come upon his duty then and had accepted all that was required of him.
‘It has nothing to do with the present,’ said Edward. ‘Do not see my sister and myself as we stand today, but as two children playing in that house across the road. I sinned against my sister, Mrs Mayben, every hour of my early life. She was stamped into the ground; she was mocked and taunted.’
