Outside—
Chapter 26: Back to Muirgissie
Chapter 27: While the Moments Ticked by
‘I wouldn’t mate, if I was you,’ said Ben. ‘It looks narsty!’
Thus, on a bridge at night, spoke one ragged man to another. Beneath them oozed dark water wending its inscrutable way towards the sea. Above them were the stars.
‘Mindjer, I ain’t sayin’ that life’s plumpunnin’,’ continued Ben, since his observation elicited no response. ‘If yer was to arsk me wot it was orl abart, I couldn’t tell yer, that’s a fack. Yer born without so much as by yer leave, and then they chucks yer this way and that till yer fair giddy. But—well, we gotter ’ang on—that’s right, ain’t it? England expecks every man to ’ang on, Gawd knows why, but yer can’t git away from it. ’Ang on!’ He paused to peer downwards at the inky river. ‘Any’ow, if I ever does pop meself orf, I’d sooner do it with a bang than a gurgle!’
He removed his eyes from the inky river. It wasn’t a pleasant sight. A moment later he was looking at another unpleasant sight. A small object gleamed up from the pavement by the stone parapet, and stooping to pick it up he discovered that it was a pin on which was mounted a miniature skull.
‘Well, I’m blowed!’ he muttered. ‘Do yer belong to one o’ them Suissicide Clubs?’
He held the hideous little decoration out to his ragged companion. Then he found himself staring at the most unpleasant sight of all. The dejected attitude in which his companion was leaning over the parapet was not that of a man contemplating death, but of a man already dead!
Ben had seen plenty of dead men in his time. It seemed to him that as soon as a person died, Fate rang for him to come and view the body. ‘Lumme, I’ve stopped noticin’ ’em!’ he had once boasted. But the boast had been bravado. He always noticed them, and they always affected his spine. This one affected his legs, as well, and before he knew it he was twenty yards away. Run first and think afterwards. That was his Napoleonic motto.
In the distance chimed a clock. The metallic notes hung slow and heavy on the air. One—two. Then from the direction of the chiming came another sound. The sound of an approaching car.
‘If yer runs, they’ll ’ave yer for it,’ Ben told himself with a gulp. ‘Stay where yer are and look ’appy.’
The only thing he had to be happy about was the substantial shadow in which he stood.
The approaching car drew closer. It also grew larger. Watching it from his shadowy sanctuary as it sped on to the bridge, Ben was impressed by the fact that it was not an ordinary car. That, perhaps, was not surprising, since nothing at this moment was ordinary. Ben’s mood was not ordinary. The bridge was not ordinary; it had become distorted into a grotesque, unnatural travesty of itself, painted with the sinister insecurity of nightmare colours. The little pin with its miniature skull was not ordinary. The ragged figure leaning limply against the parapet twenty yards away was not ordinary …
Nor was the behaviour of the car when it reached the ragged figure.
The car stopped suddenly. Why did it remind one of hospitals? Five men leapt out, violently invading the peace that had reigned uncannily a few moments before. Two of the men were policemen. Two of the others had an official atmosphere. The fifth had no official atmosphere. He wore an ordinary lounge suit and a squash felt hat and he stood a little apart, watching and smoking, while the others proceeded swiftly and smoothly with their business.
A stretcher appeared from the interior of the car. The ragged fellow into whose deaf ear Ben had tried to pass a little human comfort—posthumous comfort that only God had heard—was lifted on to the stretcher and carried into the car. Now there only remained his memory, and already the inevitable process of wiping out had begun. Ben stared at the portion of parapet against which the fellow had been leaning. Had he ever really been there? How many people would lean against the very same spot tomorrow, ignorant of their contact with tragedy?
Now the five men were talking. Their voices made a low, lugubrious buzz. Ben thought of bees. What happened when bees died? Did one bee report it, and others come along and take it out of the hive? It was a nuisance—Ben’s mind working like that! Jumping about just when he wanted to keep it steady. Perhaps it would have kept steadier on three good meals a day … Hallo! The car was filling up again. It was turning. In another moment the car, like the ragged fellow, would only be a memory, to recede unexplained into oblivion while life moved sluggishly on.
But Ben was wrong. This car would not recede into oblivion. It would remain for ever in his memory, and the thread that held him to it now, even after it had vanished from the bridge, was the man in the squash felt hat. He had stayed behind, having been temporarily obscured by the car while the others had re-entered it, and the steady glow of his cigarette made a pin-point in the dimness.
Ben found himself watching the glow. In a queer way it held him rooted, like a snake’s magnetic eye. Would it never move, and release him? If he moved first, out of the shadow, he would be spotted without a doubt.
‘Well, I ain’t done nothink!’ his thoughts suddenly rebelled. ‘I’m goin’!’
These unpleasant seconds were getting on his nerves. But before he could act upon his decision a voice called to him quietly across the road.
‘Stay where you
