The message, civil enough, was couched in the same intolerably pompous language as its predecessor:
You appear to have in your possession a red pelargonium, commonly, though incorrectly called geranium. Observation has indicated that this potted plant is currently in your kitchen.
Should you wish to accede at any time to the very reasonable request already made to you, it is suggested that you place this plant upon the window sill of your front room, where it will be readily noticed from the street.
It is regretted that up to now your general reaction appears to have been of a negative nature. You will certainly appreciate that the present activities are time and money wasting and it is unfortunately true to say that unless a more positive reaction, as indicated above, becomes apparent by seven o’clock tomorrow morning, some signal mark of displeasure will be manifested, either against you personally, or against your fiancee, Miss Juliet Bristow, either immediately or in the near future. This it would be mutually desirable to avoid.
As you appear to be a comparatively late riser, you may like to place the plant in the window this evening, or even now, should you so wish.
The note was dated that day. It had been typed upon my machine, using my typing paper and enclosed in one of my envelopes. But on leaving the flat I had taken certain precautions.
I went upstairs and examined the mortice lock. The thin wafer of tissue paper was still in place, and when I let myself in the faint dusting of salt just inside the door was undisturbed.
I sat down and read the note again.
For the second time within a few hours, I realised how alone one can feel when there is no police force to whom one can effectively appeal for support. The last time I had called on them I could not even produce the note. This time I would have a note.
“Look,” I could say, “I’ve had another note. Here it is! It’s getting serious! You’ll have to do something.”
“Oh, yes, sir?” they’d say, kindly and avuncular. “What’s the trouble this time? Let’s have a look at it, shall we?”
So I would give it to them, and they’d say:
“And was this one typed on your machine, Mr. Compton-like the last one?”
“Yes, it was,” I’d say.
“So somebody’s been in your flat again, have they, sir?”
“No, they haven’t. That’s the point. Between the time I left the flat this morning, and my return to find this note, nobody had been inside. I put a piece of tissue paper in the mortice lock, and sprinkled some salt just inside the front door, and they were undisturbed. So nobody’s been inside, see?”
“You sprinkled salt all over your own carpet and stuck a bit of bumph in the lock?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And what do you want us to do, sir? Come and sweep up the salt?”
In the end I would lose my temper, and that would confirm their views of me. I couldn’t face it.
But I knew now a little more, a fraction more, of what I was up against, and it was not reassuring. This campaign was planned by somebody who had acquired a knowledge of my character. It had been planned step by step in advance. Whoever had gone into my flat, and typed the first note, had at the same time typed the second.
They knew my first instinct would be to resist.
They guessed they would need the second note.
Maybe they had typed a third at the same time, even more peremptory, a very final warning, but I didn’t think so. They wouldn’t keep it up indefinitely, not the pressure at its present intensity, with its cost in money and time.
The crunch was bound to come soon.
One of us was going to take decisive action.
Looking back, I can see the matter depended upon three national characteristics in my make-up: Irish bloody-mindedness, Boer tenacity, English coolness and instinct for compromise.
The make-up was two to one in favour of a fight.
I wonder if they knew it. They had assessed the character presented to the world: the happy-go-lucky Irish streak, the good-natured Dutch streak, the clinically cool English streak and on the surface the assessment looked promising. But I wondered if they had examined deeply, individually and separately, the underlying implications of the three separate blood streams.
If so, they should have known that if you push your luck too far, with either the Irish or the Dutch, you’ll get an explosion of unreasoning and unexpected violence. The English react in the same way, but it takes longer because they are more calculating.
I thought of the threat to Juliet, but I dismissed it as bluff.
They must have known that if they killed Juliet nothing would ever stop me.
Suddenly I felt the explosion building up inside me.
I was fed up with the whole damned boiling. I wasn’t going to be pushed around by a crowd of bloody gangsters engaged in a take-over bid.
I would see them to hell before I knuckled under. If it was to be one man against the organisation, well, then, so be it. They could go and jump in the bloody Thames. Ah, me-brave words.
The anger swirled round and round in my stomach. I could feel the pulses in my forehead beating rapidly. Imaginary dialogue between me and them flashed through my mind, and still the fury churned up inside me, and there were more brave words.
I got up out of my chair and walked to the windows which looked out upon Stratford Road, and opened one of the windows and stood by it, and tore the latest note into pieces, and crumpled the pieces together, and tossed them down into the street, thereby, incidentally, risking a Summons for littering the highway.
Next, the furious defiance still upon me, I went into the kitchen.
The red geranium stood on a coarse cast blue-green saucer I had bought in the south of France. I snatched the plant from the saucer, and went to the kitchen waste bin. It had a lid which you raised by pressing a knob with your foot, and this I did.
I lifted my arm to hurl the plant into the bin, but I didn’t do so.
It was the English streak, the practical, dispassionate, despicable, cool, god-damned-awful, reasonable, cautious, sensible, calculating, unloveable trait which conquered an Empire and yielded it without much fuss when the time was ripe, which now held me back, whispering insidiously that there was no point in destroying a good plant.
What harm to keep it in the kitchen?
I replaced it upon its horrid saucer, and so it stood, invisible from the street, but still in being, a green and red testimony to an inherited Anglo-Saxon reluctance to burn any boats in the rear.
I went round for supper at the Bristows’ that evening.
CHAPTER 11
I have purposely refrained from describing the preparations for the wedding, now only three days distant, because for those who are not involved nothing could be more boring. If it comes to that, nothing is more boring for the bridegroom. All he is anxious to do is to marry as quickly and neatly as possible, and get off on his honeymoon, leaving all the flap behind for other people to clear up, and, incidentally, pay for.
Stanley Bristow had naturally been in his element, organising, amending, and confirming every detail, such as the hire of cars, the time of their arrival at the house, the estimated time of arrival at the church, the estimated time of departure from the church after the ceremony, the invitations, the music, the printing, the photographers, the champagne, the catering, and the flowers.
This, one felt, was his finest hour.
In so far as the atmosphere was concerned when I went round that evening, I can say that it was determinedly cheerful.
