glowing mass that flew suddenly from the face and rose like a firework itself before eddying in sparks to the ground. A child screamed and its mother pulled it clear.
The flames teased the naked face. It wasn’t a man’s face but a woman’s, pale, blank, even beautiful in its utter dead calm expressionlessness.It seemed to move and come closer to Arthur until he could see nothing, no people, no cascading colour, no smoke, nothing but that familiar and beloved face. Then it was still and calm no longer. It arched back as if in parody of those burned at the stake. The great rent under its chin opened, gaped wide like a razor-made slash, and the fire took it, bursting with a hiss through the tear and roasting with a kind of lust the twisted face.
His white lady, his Auntie Gracie, his guardian angel …
11
————
The house at 142 Trinity Road was unlit, every street-overlooking window a glaze of blackness between dim drifts of curtain. The curtains on the top floor shimmered whitely like the lacy ball gowns of women who wait in vain to be asked to dance. Inside the house there was total, breathless silence. Arthur, leaning against the banisters, his hot forehead against cold smooth wood, thought he had never known it so silent—no tap of heels, no soft giggles, mutter of words, whistle of kettles, trickle of water, throb of heaters, thud of door, heartbeat of life. It was as if it had retreated into sleep, but the sleep of an animal which is awakened at once by the smallest sound or movement. He could awaken the house by going upstairs and setting in motion all the processes of a routine evening. He could switch lights on, fill his kettle, turn on the television, turn down his bed, close the bedroom window—and look down into that court, at last unlighted, but dispossessed for ever of its lure.
Rage seized him. He put on the hall light and took a few steps towards the door of Room 2. To destroy property was foreign to his nature, property was what he respected, but now if he could get into that room, he would, he thought, destroy Anthony Johnson’s books. One after another he pulled open the drawers in Stanley Caspian’s desk. Stanley had been known to leave duplicate keys lying about there, but they were empty now of everything except screwed-up pieces of paper and bits of string. Yet he must have revenge, for he had no doubt that Anthony Johnson had performed an act of revenge against him. All these weeks Anthony Johnson had been harbouring against him agrudge—hadn’t everything in his behaviour shown it?—because he had opened that letter from the council. Now it was his turn, he who had done his best to make amends. Now some act must be performed of like magnitude. But what?
Turning away from the desk and the door of Room 2, his eye fell on the hall table. Something seemed to clutch at his chest, squeezing his ribs. All the letters were still there, undisturbed; the bill for Brian Kotowsky, the official-looking correspondence for Winston Mervyn, the mauve-grey envelope from Bristol for Anthony Johnson. No one had returned to the house since that morning, no one had removed a letter. Arthur put his hand over the Bristol envelope, covering it. A light, constant tremor animated his hand, a tremor that had been there, electrifying his hands and his body with a delicate, frenetic throb from the moment he had witnessed that fire and its consequences. Blood beat in his head as if it were feeding an engine.
He thought now of the telephone call he had overheard. “Your next letter’s our last chance.…” Her next letter. It lay under his trembling hand. Arthur lifted it up, holding it by its edge as if its centre were red-hot. Words of Auntie Gracie’s trickled across his brain.
“Other people’s correspondence is sacrosanct, Arthur. To open someone else’s letter is the action of a thief.”
But she was gone from him, never more to guard him, never more to watch and save.… He ripped open the
The flames teased the naked face. It wasn’t a man’s face but a woman’s, pale, blank, even beautiful in its utter dead calm expressionlessness.It seemed to move and come closer to Arthur until he could see nothing, no people, no cascading colour, no smoke, nothing but that familiar and beloved face. Then it was still and calm no longer. It arched back as if in parody of those burned at the stake. The great rent under its chin opened, gaped wide like a razor-made slash, and the fire took it, bursting with a hiss through the tear and roasting with a kind of lust the twisted face.
His white lady, his Auntie Gracie, his guardian angel …
11
————
The house at 142 Trinity Road was unlit, every street-overlooking window a glaze of blackness between dim drifts of curtain. The curtains on the top floor shimmered whitely like the lacy ball gowns of women who wait in vain to be asked to dance. Inside the house there was total, breathless silence. Arthur, leaning against the banisters, his hot forehead against cold smooth wood, thought he had never known it so silent—no tap of heels, no soft giggles, mutter of words, whistle of kettles, trickle of water, throb of heaters, thud of door, heartbeat of life. It was as if it had retreated into sleep, but the sleep of an animal which is awakened at once by the smallest sound or movement. He could awaken the house by going upstairs and setting in motion all the processes of a routine evening. He could switch lights on, fill his kettle, turn on the television, turn down his bed, close the bedroom window—and look down into that court, at last unlighted, but dispossessed for ever of its lure.
Rage seized him. He put on the hall light and took a few steps towards the door of Room 2. To destroy property was foreign to his nature, property was what he respected, but now if he could get into that room, he would, he thought, destroy Anthony Johnson’s books. One after another he pulled open the drawers in Stanley Caspian’s desk. Stanley had been known to leave duplicate keys lying about there, but they were empty now of everything except screwed-up pieces of paper and bits of string. Yet he must have revenge, for he had no doubt that Anthony Johnson had performed an act of revenge against him. All these weeks Anthony Johnson had been harbouring against him agrudge—hadn’t everything in his behaviour shown it?—because he had opened that letter from the council. Now it was his turn, he who had done his best to make amends. Now some act must be performed of like magnitude. But what?
Turning away from the desk and the door of Room 2, his eye fell on the hall table. Something seemed to clutch at his chest, squeezing his ribs. All the letters were still there, undisturbed; the bill for Brian Kotowsky, the official-looking correspondence for Winston Mervyn, the mauve-grey envelope from Bristol for Anthony Johnson. No one had returned to the house since that morning, no one had removed a letter. Arthur put his hand over the Bristol envelope, covering it. A light, constant tremor animated his hand, a tremor that had been there, electrifying his hands and his body with a delicate, frenetic throb from the moment he had witnessed that fire and its consequences. Blood beat in his head as if it were feeding an engine.
He thought now of the telephone call he had overheard. “Your next letter’s our last chance.…” Her next letter. It lay under his trembling hand. Arthur lifted it up, holding it by its edge as if its centre were red-hot. Words of Auntie Gracie’s trickled across his brain.
“Other people’s correspondence is sacrosanct, Arthur. To open someone else’s letter is the action of a thief.”
But she was gone from him, never more to guard him, never more to watch and save.… He ripped open the
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