The Bohemian Girl Part 10

'My G.o.d, you're a wonder!'

'It was getting on for dark by then. I stepped outside where I could see and asked him if he'd let me have the receipt for a few days. Alf was shocked at the very idea. Could I rent rent it for a few days? Alf said it would upset his record-keeping something fierce, not to mention morality, but two-and-six turned out to be the price of his record-keeping it for a few days? Alf said it would upset his record-keeping something fierce, not to mention morality, but two-and-six turned out to be the price of his record-keeping and and his scruples. He was casting about for something else to sell me by then, but I had the receipt and I simply walked away to the telegraph office at St Pancras station, where I sent a telegram to the left-luggage office at Biggleswade to ask if the item number of the receipt had been picked up.' She grinned. 'They wired back this morning that it hadn't.' his scruples. He was casting about for something else to sell me by then, but I had the receipt and I simply walked away to the telegraph office at St Pancras station, where I sent a telegram to the left-luggage office at Biggleswade to ask if the item number of the receipt had been picked up.' She grinned. 'They wired back this morning that it hadn't.'

Denton slid down into his armchair. 'Mary Thomason never got there.'

'The trunk hadn't been retrieved, at any rate. So this morning, I went and got it.'

He looked down at the trunk. It was shaped like a loaf of bread, perhaps two feet long, cheap wood partly covered with pressed tin and held together by oak slats. 'What's in it?'

'I stopped at a locksmith's on my way here and had it unlocked. But I haven't looked inside.'

He tried to smile at her, but the smile was crooked and unconvincing because he was thinking she could be in trouble if somebody eventually came looking for the trunk. There was, too, a hesitation about looking into somebody's privacy - more pointed, perhaps, because somebody had been looking into his. 'You're a wonder,' he said again.

Atkins came in with a tea tray, which he put on a folding cake stand that he produced from the shadows of the room like somebody doing a magic trick. He put it down near Janet Striker with a perfect-servant flourish, poured her a cup of tea, and then faded back down the long room, hardly pausing as he opened the doors of the dumb waiter before disappearing down his stairs.

Denton took a cup of tea, then put it aside and bent forward and pulled, using the trunk's hasp as a handle. Inside, a folded dress was visible, filling the interior, white with a narrow yellow line in the fabric, wrinkled bits of ruffle and lace showing; the fabric looked much washed. When he didn't move to take it out, Janet Striker lifted it in both hands and put it on the chair in which she'd been sitting, then thought better of it and shook the dress out, turning it so that it fell from her hands as if it were being worn. She held it against herself. 'Rather jeune fille jeune fille. Appropriate, then. Summer dress, cotton, not awfully well made. She wasn't as tall as I.'

Smudges of something black marked part of the skirt. She held it up. 'Charcoal, don't you think? From drawing. Meaning she'd worn it and not laundered it. Or it didn't wash out.'

Under the dress were a couple of petticoats, a very plain nightgown with long sleeves, a small hat, also white, fairly new. 'Rather virginal,' Janet Striker said.

'Maybe her mother bought her clothes for her.'

'I'd say they almost look too young for a woman going somewhere like the Slade. But who knows.' She pulled out three pairs of drawers, the sort that tied at the knee. Unembarra.s.sed, she said, 'The new style, anyway.' She tossed them aside to reveal a brown cloak very worn around the bottom, also a pair of grubby wool mittens and a heavy cardigan, much ravelled at the cuffs and stretched and bagged all over. Janet fingered a few pairs of white stockings. Denton leaned over to see to the bottom - a single pair of shoes, very worn; a stack of handkerchiefs; a narrow box about six inches long; a pasteboard box that the shoes might have come in; and an imitation-leather folder so wide that it had had to be put in at an angle. Denton took the narrow box and pulled off the lid. 'Why does a young woman have something called "The Princess Depilatory"?'

'Women have hair, like men. Sometimes they want to get rid of it.'

He looked up at her. She was smiling. Underarms and legs, he supposed she meant; women were still so completely covered that, despite a tendency for skirts to creep up an inch or so, no hair was ever seen except on their heads. One famous writer was supposed to have abandoned his wife on their wedding night when he'd found she had pubic hair.

'Is it something she'd want with her?'

'She left in a hurry, didn't she?'

He lifted out the imitation-leather folder. It was made to hold prints or drawings, tied with a limp cotton ribbon. 'What's in the shoe box?'

She had it in her hands. 'Drawing pencils, India ink, charcoal - a soft eraser - pen nibs, some metal thing with a plunger, like a perfume atomizer - some reddish sticks of something, also white-'

The folder held about twenty sheets of what artists called 'cartridge paper', cheap stuff used for sketching. Most of the drawings were, he thought, cla.s.sroom work: a clothed model, a still life of jugs and dishes, hands and noses and heads; a male nude, his privates hidden in a sort of sling; a piece of statuary. Three of the sheets were different - one a drawing of a house with rather formal shrubbery, one of a front door with urns and an upside-down cone that had once been used for extinguishing torches. The third was on different paper, heavier and textured, a drawing of a female head. Two much smaller drawings, one in ink over the original pencil lines, took up the two lower corners. The paper was wrinkled, as if it had been crushed and then smoothed out again.

'What are the little ones?'

'I don't know. Don't you see that on etchings sometimes, little scenes like that?'

He wished he had his new gla.s.ses. What he could make out was some sort of arched stonework on the left side and a male head on the other. 'What's he doing?'

'Screaming? Shouting? Not enjoying himself, certainly.' She was standing next to his chair now. He was acutely aware of her, a smell of soap. She reached across him and took the drawing to turn it over. On the back had been written in pencil, now smudged, 'Mary 3 aug OI.' Janet said almost eagerly, 'It has to be her!'

'Lot of Marys out there. Self-portrait?'

'The style's very different from the other stuff. Somebody else drew it, I think. Denton, it has to be her.'

They wrangled over it. Finally Denton put the drawing back in the trunk and said, 'Is that everything?'

'There's a sketchbook.' She leafed through it. 'More Slade stuff, I expect. Half of it still unused.'

'I think it's a self-portrait. She didn't have much money for models. Look at the clothes. One dress.'

'And one she wore when she went away. Two dresses - wealth, to some people.'

'Starving artist?'

Janet picked up the drawing, studied it and put it down again. 'She, or whoever did it, must have thought better of it - balled it up and then tried to smooth it out.'

'Didn't like it, maybe, but couldn't part with it. Because it was her own face? Or because somebody else did the drawing and she valued the person?' He picked it up again. The face was pretty, young, the hair almost unkempt, rather s.h.a.ggy over the forehead and down the sides of the face. 'Is the hair "Bohemian"?'

'I don't meet many artists in my line of work.' She moved away from him. 'I have to go.'

'I know you got the box for me, but-It wasn't wise. There could be trouble if anybody ever comes looking for it. Promise me you'll never do such a thing again.'

She was putting on her coat. She turned her head and looked at him. He knew instantly that he'd said the wrong thing. She said, her voice low, 'Don't ever tell me what I should and should not do. And don't tell me what's "unwise".' She had her hand on the doork.n.o.b. 'I shall take it back late on Monday and say it's the wrong trunk.'

He had moved to her. 'Stay,' he said. 'I'm sorry-'

She shook her head. Going down the stairs, she said, 'Please get a photo of that drawing made on Monday, and perhaps I can show it at the Slade. I'm going on half days at the Society now - dwindling down to the end like a candle.' He told her he wanted to talk more to her, but she had rattled him and he babbled. She, on the other hand, was calm, seemed to have forgotten her flare-up.

Atkins was already standing by the lower door. Denton said, 'I'll see Mrs Striker into the cab.'

When she was inside the hansom, he held it by putting his hands on it and leaning in. 'Janet, I want to see see you.' He waited for some response, got only her steady eyes and then a turn away. He backed to the pavement and called up 'Drive on!' to the man behind. you.' He waited for some response, got only her steady eyes and then a turn away. He backed to the pavement and called up 'Drive on!' to the man behind.

Denton lingered in the cold lower hall, angry with himself. He stared at his dreadful Scottish paintings. Fool, you d.a.m.ned fool, you treated her like a woman! Fool, you d.a.m.ned fool, you treated her like a woman! Atkins was in the sitting room when he went up, collecting the tea things; he must have been doing so for several minutes - rather a long time for two cups - so as to talk. Atkins was in the sitting room when he went up, collecting the tea things; he must have been doing so for several minutes - rather a long time for two cups - so as to talk.

Knowing what was expected, Denton said, 'Well?'

'Resourceful lady.'

'I meant the trunk.'

'Well, the brother did his part, else the box wouldn't of got to Biggleswade.'

'Biggleswade's north. The girl told her landlady she was from the west.'

'Girls lie.' He made a face. Like Katya Like Katya, he meant.

'Granted, but why? She has her studies; she has a room; she writes me a note but doesn't send it; then she leaves London. That all makes sense, more or less. Her brother collects her things; all right, that's sensible. Then the trunk goes north instead of west and she never collects it.'

'She's dead. I mean, that's what's likely, let's be honest. Somebody done her the harm she feared. Not a cheerful thought, but a sensible one.' Atkins grinned. 'Maybe Albert Cosgrove did her in.'

'Oh, shut up.'

He woke during the night feeling at first feverish and heavy, then anxious. The bedcovers were like lead, and he pushed them back, then used his drawn-up legs to shoot them to the foot. It had got warm. He pulled off his nightshirt and lay there naked, feeling the air on his hot skin.

A dream had made him anxious. Worse than anxious - near panic. He knew the dream. Back in the house he'd built in Iowa. Seeing his wife through the window, walking towards the pasture. The horrifying sense of the inevitable, the terrible. But the dream hadn't gone on to his finding her body as it usually did, the lye jug beside her. That was the way it always ended, but not tonight. Tonight's had ended with seeing her through the window, as if seeing her that way was seeing it all, suffering it all, leaving him to wake with the anxiety of knowing what was to come and not being able to stop it.

He got up and walked to the window. The dream wasn't all of it. It was also that d.a.m.ned man, whoever he was, Albert Cosgrove, who had written him the letters, broken into the house behind, broken into even his own house.

With more coming - that was the sense of the dream: There's more to come. There's more to come.

He saw his own reflection in the gla.s.s, a double laid over the dim bulk of the house behind. There was a man out there who wanted to be his double - to be be him. That was it. Circling, watching, stealing bits of him, trying to become him. him. That was it. Circling, watching, stealing bits of him, trying to become him.

Denton shuddered.

He knew what it was to concentrate on someone else so fiercely that the mind seemed to detach itself and fix. But his 'someone elses' were inventions - the characters in the unfinished novel. He knew that he partly lived in it. He carried on conversations in his head, saw faces, rooms, vistas. But he knew that that world was not real. And this novel was about his own marriage, his dead wife, their harrowing of each other, so it was that much more like inhabiting a second self. But he was - he smiled in the darkness - sane. sane. The man who wanted to be him, he was sure now, was not. Denton himself was Albert Cosgrove's novel, or at least the central character in the novel Cosgrove apparently couldn't write, couldn't create, and so Cosgrove's concentration went into imitating - The man who wanted to be him, he was sure now, was not. Denton himself was Albert Cosgrove's novel, or at least the central character in the novel Cosgrove apparently couldn't write, couldn't create, and so Cosgrove's concentration went into imitating - stealing him. stealing him.

And it would get worse. And when it didn't succeed, because it couldn't, would Cosgrove do what Denton had done with a book that went wrong - turn on it and destroy it?

He pulled the nightgown over his head and pushed his arms into the sleeves of a robe. He lit the gas and sat at his desk and tried to write.

CHAPTER NINE.

He slept a few hours in the early morning, woke and went back to his desk. The mood of the night, somewhat dissipated in daylight, faded as he bored in on his work.

Atkins, who was going to church (Denton was surprised to find it was Sunday) and apparently thought Denton should, too, made disapproving noises with dishes and clothes hangers.

'Stop that racket.'

'Being as quiet as I can.'

'You're making noise fit to raise the dead. If you've something to say, say it!'

Atkins lifted Denton's empty plate to the tray with the care of somebody taking an egg from a nest. 'My grandmother banged the pans about when she was crossed,' he said.

'What's that supposed to mean - you come by noise-making honestly? Go to church!'

'It isn't church, it's chapel.'

Denton looked at him over the tops of his new eyegla.s.ses. 'Katya went to church church.'

'I've moved beyond Katya. I don't want to hear about her.'

'Give my regards to the saints.'

Before Atkins could do so, Denton heard a knock at the front door; a minute later, Atkins was beside him again.

'You know anything about a Son of Abraham's on our doorstep saying he's come to dig up the garden?'

Thinking of his work, Denton stared at him. 'No. Don't bother me. Wait - yes. Mrs Striker said something about-h.e.l.l, she gave me a name.'

'Cohan. Sounds Irish to me, but he looks about as Irish as the Levite that crossed over the road. Right, he mentioned Mrs Striker's name.'

'Why didn't you tell me that?'

'Thought I'd get right to the point. You want him to dig up the garden, or not?'

'Yes, yes, put him to work. Have we got a spade?'

'Probably. We had good intentions back there, once.' Atkins put on a pious face. 'You sure you want him working on the Lord's Day?'

'If he's a Jew, that was yesterday. Go away!'

Denton worked until noon and could do no more. The penalty for having worked part of the night. Atkins, by his own choice, had Sunday off until late evening. Denton found a couple of eggs, scrambled them on the gas ring in the alcove off his sitting room: part pantry, part kitchen. A year before, somebody had waited in there to kill him. He wondered if Albert Cosgrove had been in there, too, handled the cutlery, opened the cupboard, inhaled the air.

Denton prowled his house, restless now. He tried to read and found nothing interesting. He thought he would go out, but where? Not to find Janet Striker, certainly; he didn't know where she lived, and she wouldn't be in her office today. Munro wouldn't be at New Scotland Yard. He looked out of the rear window, saw a dark-haired man, foreshortened, digging up the weeds. He went at them as if they were his worst enemies. Denton went down and introduced himself.

'All one to me. I got lots of this muck to keep me busy.' He was overweight, shorter than Denton but broad, with shoulders and arms that filled his threadbare coat like a sausage its skin. He wore a cloth cap, filthy rat-catchers; his nose was mashed to his face, his ears battered. Small eyes glared at Denton as if the world were a perpetual challenge.

Denton said, 'You're a prizefighter.'

'I was, and proud of it! Never knocked off my feet I wasn't. I may not have won every time the bell rang, but n.o.body ever knocked me down. Just you ask! Ask them wot the Stepney Jew-Boy did.' He had a definite accent.

Denton flinched. 'Jew-Boy?'

'Jew-Boy. When I started fightink, they'd shout "Jew-Boy" at me to insult me, they did. I thought, I'll give you Jew-Boy, I will, so I called myself Jew-Boy and beat the livink tar out of the first six gentiles I fought. Then I was the Stepney Jew-Boy for good.'

Denton studied him. 'What's a prizefighter want to spade up a back garden for?'

'Am I still a prizefighter? Do I look twenty again? Or do I look canny enough to've got out with my brains intact when I was thirty-five? How old you think I am?'

'Forty.'

'And four. How many prizefighters you think are still at it at forty-four without they're hearink bells n.o.body else can hear? Judas Cripes, give me some credit for intelligence, please do. I'm forty-four and I ain't fought in nine years and I got no job! That's why I'm diggink up your back b.l.o.o.d.y garden!'

Denton asked what he was to pay him, and he said he and Mrs Striker had settled on three shillings a day, for which she'd paid two days in advance because he'd been 'caught short' when he talked to her.

'So you'll be back in the morning.'

'You think I'd take money for work I wasn't goink to do? Yas, I'll be here in the mornink. And I don't steal and I don't lie and I didn't kill Christ. Good day to youse.'

The day yawned ahead of him - a Sunday, little doing. He decided to go out, if only to walk himself into exhaustion.

The air beyond his front door was cool, clear - he thought that if he could have got up high, he could have seen all the way down the Thames to the North Sea - with a sky the clear blue of a bottle with the sun behind it. The light was glaring, but even so the day was too cool for sitting about, perfect for walking. Stopping often to look back for Albert Cosgrove, he walked, first to Holborn and Chancery Lane, then along Fleet Street and Cannon Street, turning west again along the river at Billingsgate Market, now only residual fish smell and gulls and a great many cats, and a memory of the days when the fishwives had been there and 'Billingsgate' was a term for creative insult. He picked his way through small, silent streets to Soho, turned along Old Compton Street and, on an impulse, having nowhere to go, found his way again to the Albany, where he lingered at the entrance before going in and walking slowly to the door of Heseltine, the man who had found Mary Thomason's letter. If he objected to be called on on a Sunday, he could always turn him away.

He offered his card to the bottle-nosed man who opened the door.