Prelude To A Certain Midnight

‘Well, I see what you mean,’ said the host, ‘I must admit that he does, as it were, look as if he was walking in his sleep. But he’s all right. I’ve known him for ages. Gentle sort of creature, terribly fond of children.’

‘Is he married?’ asked Muriel.

The host laughed; this question amused him. ‘Married? Gobd Lord no! I couldn’t imagine him marrying anybody, could you?’

‘Why not? Is he impotent?’

‘How the devil should I know?’

‘Is he queer?

‘No, I should say definitely not queer. I don’t think he’s got much interest in sex at all. At least, I don’t associate him with anything of the kind. The peculiar thing about him is that women find him attractive. What they see in him I can’t imagine. But I know quite a few girls who have more or less fallen for him. I wonder why?’

Muriel said: ‘Oh, I don’t know. He isn’t so bad really. I think he’s rather interesting.’

‘In what way interesting?’ asked Nana.

‘I don’t know. Just one of those things. Sort of interesting.’

The host said: ‘I know what it is. It’s the same as with those professional polygamists. They’re irresistible to women because they’d so obviously make good, faithful, docile husbands. You couldn’t imagine him, for instance, rushing from pub to pub or brothel to brothel night after night, could you? No; security, nice quiet devotion, the pay envelope intact every Friday night, that’s what you’d expect from our old pal. House-trained, obedient, born to be henpecked. That’s what most women like, especially widows with a little money of their own.’

Nana said: ‘You know too much about women. If you’re not careful, I shall henpeck you.’

‘Then I shall lock you up in a dark room and feed you on bread and water, and break your spirit that way.’

The girl Muriel asked: ‘What does he do?’

The host looked blank and then said: ‘Well, as a matter of fact, I think he writes.’

‘Well, everybody writes nowadays. What does he write?’

‘He’s very cagy about it. But once I caught him reading the Weekly Sweetheart. You know, that tuppenny rag that has stories about mill-girls and baronets and all that sort of thing. It’s my theory that he writes that kind of stuff, but I couldn’t say for certain. I shouldn’t be surprised though, because he doesn’t seem to want to talk about it.’

Muriel nodded and said: ‘Well, I don’t blame him. I wouldn’t want to admit that I wrote tripe like that, would you?’

The wife said: ‘I don’t see why not. What’s the matter with it? There’s nothing shameful in it, is there? I’d just as soon write stories about mill-girls and baronets as go about in corduroy trousers writing highbrow poetry. It’s an honest living, and —’

Her husband whooped with laughter and shouted: ‘Ah-ha ! Here speaks the married woman! Honest living! Ah-ha! Ah-ha — the pay envelope, the pay envelope! There you are, you see the irresistible fascination of the pay envelope, eh?’

‘Darling, don’t be such a bloody idiot,’ said his wife.

‘I wasn’t saying there was anything wrong in writing that sort of stuff,’ said Muriel, ‘but if a man happens to be shy and sensitive.., you know what I mean.’

The husband said: ‘Oh sure, sure, we know what you mean all right, we know what you mean, Muriel, my dear. You and your Weekly Sweetheart.’

‘I wonder —’ said Muriel, and then stopped.

‘You see, darling, she wonders. She wonders,’ said the husband, affectionately patting the hindquarters of his wife. ‘There’s the secret of that fatal fascination. He gets them wondering, my poppet, he gets them wondering. He gives them food for thought.’

‘All he gives me is the creeps,’ she said, toying with the lobe of his ear.

‘Oh, forget him, my poppet!’

‘With pleasure, my own!’

31

While this conversation was in progress, the Murderer was back in his bedsitting-room. He had switched on the light, drawn the curtains, taken off and carefully hung up his only decent grey suit, and put on a tired-looking old blue woollen dressinggown. He had work to do. The idea of work was distasteful to him: he just wanted to dream. But a man must eat, keep a roof ovei his head, and dress respectably. He had a craving for new suits. Once in a while he saw himself as Beau Brummell swaggering in impeccable coats, immaculate linen, and cravats that took an hour to tie — the haughty, the intolerably insolent, the fastidious buck whose wit was more to be feared than… say, a Spanish knife — an elegant Blade.

He caught himself on the shadowy verge of another daydream and dragged himself to his little table. He had to work. The Ubiquity Press paid him a guinea a thousand words. There were men who made fat livings out of Ubiquity at that rate, but they could work like demons: words seemed to pour out of them like sugar from a torn paper-bag. The Murderer was something of an artist: he laid out his second-hand sentences with the meticulosity of a rag-picker sorting rubbish; by hand, with a fine-pointed pen. At present he was working on a new serial for The Knuckleduster, a boys’ paper that specialized in tales of violence. He had invented a character named ‘Ironskin Obst’ who had discovered a serum that gave his skin the impregnability of fine steel without impairing its flexibility. Fire a gun at Obst and the bullet flattened itself against his forehead; throw him off a cliff, and instead of smashing himself on the rocks below Obst smashed the rocks. Hit him, and you beat your hand to pulp. The only way to get at Ironskin was with a blowlamp — and an extra-special blowlamp at that. The Villain had such a blowlamp.

The pity of it was that words came so slowly. He had to exert himself to make five pounds a week, and he