Coffin’s Dark Number. Gwendoline Butler

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      I’m afraid she’s picked up that rough way of talking from my father. It won’t get her anywhere. I didn’t answer but poured myself a cup of tea and started to drink it. They weren’t loonies. A little unusual perhaps in their interests, but not loonies, or I wouldn’t be associated with them.

      ‘Seen anything lately?’

      ‘You know I’ve never seen anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t even look. That’s not my job.’

      She snorted. Very few women can make that noise, but she could. ‘What do you get out of it?’

      The second person who had asked me that tonight. ‘I’m practising,’ I said, and sipped my tea.

      ‘It was me that made that tea you’re enjoying so much,’ she said.

      That’s another thing she’s learned from my father; how to make a good cup of tea. They’re remarkably alike. There are just the three of us, me, elder sister, and my father. My mother died a long while ago. I half remember her. Some days more than others. And I suppose that’s how it is with my sister too. Some days she looks more like the photograph of my mother and the other days not. I’m always frightened she’ll get to look like my father.

      ‘You’re pretty,’ I said.

      ‘Why the compliment?’

      ‘Oh, I don’t know. Perhaps I’m a bit low-spirited tonight.’

      ‘Oh.’ She considered. ‘Where’s Judith?’ Judith was my former girl friend. Former, since last night.

      ‘We’ve split up.’

      ‘Why?’ There again she was like my father. She had to know why. No tactful silences. Still, it was easy to answer.

      ‘She said I don’t raise her spirits.’

      ‘Oh.’ Once again she considered. ‘You raise mine. I often get a good laugh out of you.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      ‘Oh well, you’ll get another girl.’

      ‘I won’t get one with a car. Not round here.’ It was luck having pulled in one girl friend with an automobile in this neighbourhood. Hers was a beautiful little white Triumph convertible, too. You froze in it in winter (she never let you put the hood up) but you felt a real he-man in summer. We only had one summer together, me, Judith and the car.

      ‘She still on the stage?’

      ‘Resting. Trying out for a part tomorrow.’

      I got up to go upstairs to my room. ‘Dad out?’

      ‘No. Out the back watching his birds.’

      At the door, I said: ‘Can I have the front room this day week?’ Jean nodded.

      The Club occasionally met here. When it did Jean served coffee and cake and popped in and out observing us. I think she rather enjoyed it. I’ve noticed that this family’s pleasure tends to be vicarious. Jean watches me, I watch the Club and Dad watches his birds. I must check this tendency.

      I enjoyed the Club meetings myself. When we were really functioning well, comparing notes, checking photographs, suggesting future projects, all of them looking to me for directions, I had the feeling of the chain of power stretching directly from John Plowman to me and going no further. That was how I wanted it in that group and that was what I meant by practice. We might be stretching out to other galaxies, but as far as I was concerned it was strictly an exercise in politics.

      On my way upstairs I looked out of the window on the stairs and saw a police car go past. Three children in eighteen months and all living within one square mile of each other. Three children just gone. Sixpence in the pocket, ta ta, Mum. And then never seen again. She was the first, Shirley Boyle, aged eight.

      I went on into my room and sat down on my bed. Jean didn’t come into this room much; I dusted it and looked after my bed. Jean knew I liked my secrets.

      I drew the curtains on the night. The police car came back down the road. This time I could see a man in the back. He had a solid official look. We have a high-ranking policeman living round the corner from us. He’s called Coffin. He has a wife who is observed sharply by the old cats of the neighbourhood because she is an actress and this naturally alerts their moral sense. Judith was going to introduce us before we broke up.

      Down below I heard the telephone ring. When I’m established in my chosen way of life I shall have a telephone in every room. I hate people shouting up the stairs for me.

      ‘Coming,’ I called.

      ‘David,’ she said, when I got to the bottom of the stairs.

      ‘Hello, Slave.’ I called him this. David Edmondstone was someone I’d known at school and then lost sight of for a bit. The last year we’d seen each other regularly. If we’d had lags at the sort of school we went to, Dave would have been my fag. When we were “streamed” (that was their jargon for a sorting out process according to ability) I was A and he was C; that was the measure of our relationship. But when he came back I was glad to see him. He sort of fitted into my life. There had been a hole vacant and he came into it.

      ‘Hello, Tony. Long time no see.’

      ‘Only yesterday. And talk English.’ I’d never cure him of using second-rate slang.

      He laughed. ‘Tony, I want to talk, I’m excited.’

      He sounded it. ‘Well, what’s excited you?’

      ‘I’ve got a new girl. You ought to see her.’

      ‘Good.’ Perhaps this one will last. They didn’t usually. I mean no one wants fidelity but his turn-over was too rapid. I don’t know what he did to them. I didn’t take literally his remark about seeing her. I knew he wouldn’t let me see her; he never did.

      ‘Where did you meet her?’ Jean was waving at me not to make a long call of it, but Dave might go on for hours. ‘Where are you speaking from?’

      ‘Call-box outside Lowther’s.’ Lowther’s was a big all-night chemists which was a great place for night birds (which Dave and I intermittently were) in the New Cut Road. Fine old slum it have been at one time but now it was a newly built disaster area. ‘Oh, I met her around,’ he said vaguely. ‘You know.’

      ‘If you’re going to talk all night, let me know,’ whispered Jean.

      I scowled at her, nodding my head like a mandarin. She didn’t know what to make of that and it kept her quiet for a bit. Always keep your signals contradictory, that’s a good rule with an opponent. It puzzles them and they don’t know what to do. Quite scientific really. All animals have aggression or submission signals which other animals of their kind recognize. The dog snarls or cringes. We smile and nod or else frown and clench our muscles. Then the other animal knows what to do. But mix the signals and this throws them.

      ‘You two,’ she muttered. ‘I don’t like to watch. I mean, it’s such a funny way to live.’

      This time I smiled but shook my СКАЧАТЬ