Payment Deferred · Chapter 10 (2/3)

There were one or two young men, too, who scraped acquaintance with the queer party. One of them dropped out when he discovered that Mrs. Marble did not possess much jewellery, and, in fact, did not care for jewellery, but the others stayed on. They danced with Winnie in the evenings, or took her “just for the rag” to the local theatre. They were nearly annoyed when they found that Mrs. Marble took it for granted that she was to accompany them; but there was no thought in her mind save just that. She could not picture a state of affairs in which anyone would sooner be alone with her daughter than have her present as well. But the men, young and old alike, found that there was one sure way of enjoying Winnie’s society unadulterated; that was to settle Mrs. Marble comfortably on the pier listening to the band, in a deckchair, and then take Winnie for a walk round. Mrs. Marble was quite pleased when she found how attentive the men all were to her, and to what pains they went to see that she was quite comfortable and had all she wanted. It was a pleasant change from seventeen years odd of married life with William Marble. And it was astonishing how often Winnie replied to Mrs. Marble’s question: “What would you like to do this morning?” (or this afternoon), with the ready response, “Oh, let’s go on to the pier and listen to the band, Mother.”

But amid all this enjoyment John was not enjoying himself. There was no place in the Grand Pavilion Hotel where he could sit and read in comfort, and the beach and the promenade were too crowded to permit such a thing either. He always had the Giant Twin, of course, but he did not always want to be out on it. Motorcycling, even on the finest example of the finest make of motorcycle in the world, begins to pall a little after three weeks’ enforced indulgence, and there came a time when John was frankly bored. He was bored with hotel meals, with hotel friends, and with hotel public rooms. Music at his meals ceased to have any attraction for him at all. The men who sought Winnie’s society looked upon him as an unmitigated nuisance, and were not too careful about concealing their opinion. And Winnie held the same opinion and did not try to conceal it at all. He could not even discuss motor-bicycles with anyone, in that he never met anyone who had ever owned such a thing.

John was bored, utterly and absolutely. After a fortnight’s stay he hinted as much to his mother, but hints were not very effective in his mother’s case. Three days later he tried again, with equal unsuccess. When he had endured three whole weeks he took the bit between his teeth and announced his intention of going home.

“But, my dear, why?” asked Mrs. Marble.

John did his best to explain, but he felt from the start it was hopeless. The intuition proved correct, for Mrs. Marble had no sympathy at all with boredom, never being bored herself.

“I don’t think father will like it if you go home,” said Mrs. Marble. “He’s spent an awful lot on this holiday for you, and you ought to show that you appreciate it.”

“But there’s nothing to do,” expostulated John.

“Why, there’s lots and lots to do, dear. You can listen to the band, or you can go out on the motorbike, or⁠—or⁠—oh, there’s lots to do. A great active boy like you ought to find things to do as easily as anything.”

“A great active boy can’t listen to a band all day and all night,” said John, “even if I was a boy, and even if I liked listening to bands, which I don’t, very much. Hang it, I can’t get hold of any decent books to read, and when I do I can’t find anywhere to read them.”

“Don’t argue with him, Mother,” cut in Winnie. “He’s only finding fault.”

“Finding fault” was in Mrs. Marble’s eyes a sort of vice to which the male sex was peculiarly prone at inconvenient moments. She suffered on account of it on occasions when Mr. Marble’s temper was not all that it should have been. Winnie seized the advantage conferred upon her by this dexterous tactical thrust.

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t go home, if you ask me,” she said. “He’d be company for father, and it’s only for a week, when all’s said and done.”

Her arguments were not particular happy, for Mrs. Marble remembered with a slight shudder the time when she had flung herself between her son and her husband. And she would be positively unhappy, whenever she remembered to be, at the thought of two helpless males alone in a house which cost her so much pains to run. But Winnie had her own reasons for wishing John away, reasons not unconnected with walks upon the pier and with visits to local cinematograph theatres.

“I should let him go,” said Winnie. “Then he can collect a few of the mouldy old books he wants to read. He’ll soon get fed up with being at home, and then he can come down here again. It’ll only be for a day or two. He won’t stand cooking his own breakfast longer than that. Then he’ll be able to tell you how father’s getting on.”

It was a wily move. Mrs. Marble, in the intervals between being intimidated by waiters and chambermaids and enjoying the luxury they represented, was occasionally conscience-stricken about her deserted husband. She heard from him very little⁠—only one or two straggling scrawls that told her nothing. More would have meant too much trouble to Mr. Marble. Winnie’s suggestion was therefore well timed.

“Well, do that then, dear,” said Mrs. Marble. “Go home just for the night and get all the books and things you want. Of course, if father doesn’t mind, you can stay longer if you like. But you mustn’t do anything that might make him cross.”

It was hardly the freehanded congé that Winnie would have liked her to give, but, still, it was something.

When John announced his intention of starting off at once Mrs. Marble was shocked into protest. To her there was something unthinkable in changing one’s place of abode at ten minutes’ notice. She succeeded in persuading her son into postponing his departure until the next day⁠—Saturday.

Even then she was full of instructions at the last moment.

“You know where the clean sheets are, don’t you, dear?” she said. “They’re in the lowest drawer in the big chest of drawers. Mind you air them before you put them on your bed. Oh, and when you come down again will you bring my white fur? It’s getting rather cold in the evenings now. You’re sure you know the way home all right? It’s rather a long way to go all by yourself.”

John had often before covered three times the distance in a single day, but he forbore saying so. He felt that it would be wiser to let his mother run on and have her full say out and then he would clear off without further argument. She continued, unmindful:

“I shall be quite anxious to hear that you got home safely. Mind you write as soon as you’re there, and be sure you tell me how father is. And⁠—and⁠—don’t forget what I said about not doing anything to annoy father.”

That made John fidget uneasily in his chair. At long last Mrs. Marble ended with:

“Well, goodbye, dear. Have a good time. Have you got enough money? Then goodbye. Don’t forget what I said. We’re just going on the pier with Mr. Horne. Goodbye, dear.”

And Winnie and Mrs. Marble and Mr. Horne were gone.

That was a most enjoyable day for John. For once he was neither the hotel prisoner nor yet was he at home with his father. It was the transition stage. He spent his time deliciously, luxuriously. He bathed by himself, at the far end of the town⁠—his last bathe before starting out for home. That took time, for he wanted to make the most of it. Then he came back to the Grand Pavilion Hotel, took the Giant Twin from the garage, where it stood impatient and intolerant of all these domesticated saloons and limousines. The kickstarter swung obediently, and the engine broke into its sweet thunderous roar. John swung himself into the saddle, and the Giant Twin sprang impatiently forward as he let in the clutch. They climbed the steep ascent of the side street without an effort, nosed their way through the squalor of the slums at the back of the town, and in fifteen minutes were out on the free open downs. But John was determined not to waste a minute of his day’s happiness. He curbed the ardour of the Giant Twin to a mere fourteen miles an hour⁠—a Rocinante speed worthy of his quixotic mood, as he told himself. They ambled along the great high road in wonderful spirits. The wind blew past him gently, and he filled his lungs with it, sighing with pleasure. It was twelve o’clock when he started; by one o’clock not thirty miles⁠—not half the way⁠—had been covered. John lunched by himself at a big yet homely hotel by the roadside. It was a decided change from lunch at the Grand Pavilion Hotel, with a band blaring only ten feet away, and mother talking platitudes⁠—she couldn’t help that, poor dear, but it grew wearisome after a week or two⁠—and Winnie looking round discreetly at the men, or, worse, chattering away to some greasy-haired fellow she had wangled mother into inviting. They were all greasy-haired, somehow, and not one of them knew how to speak to a fellow, not even the young ones. And as for the old ones! There was one doddering old idiot who had asked him if he kept white mice! John stretched his legs in comforting fashion under the table and lit a cigarette. Thank God, that was over, anyway. He couldn’t have borne that place another day. He hoped he would be all right with father. Father was such an uncertain sort of fellow nowadays. But apparently all he wanted was to be left alone, and that was all he wanted, as well. So they ought to get on all right. If they didn’t⁠—well, it couldn’t be as bad as the hotel, anyway, with mother fussing over him and Winnie scrapping all the time. There was a little bit of the boor and a little bit of the bear about John.

But he was lighthearted enough when he came down and started up the Giant Twin once more for the last run homeward. He still went slowly, partly of his own free will, partly because of the growing volume of Saturday traffic that he met. He turned away from Croydon, and the Giant Twin brought him triumphantly up the long hill to the Crystal Palace without an effort. Ten minutes later the motor-bicycle ran silently with the clutch out, down the slope of Malcolm Road, and pulled up gently outside Number 53. John dismounted slowly. It had been a glorious day. Even now it was not yet evening. There was nothing better than a late afternoon in August, at the end of a flaming day. The rather depressing little road looked positively heavenly to the exile after three weeks at the Grand Pavilion Hotel. There was just a touch of red in the sky, where the sun was beginning to sink. John was half smiling as he looked round him, while he fumbled in his pocket for his latchkey. He was even smiling as he put the key in the lock, and as he walked into the house.

Mr. Marble had lately been looking forward to his Saturday afternoons. Following a lazy morning at the office, and a lazy lunch in town, he could travel quietly homeward after the rush. And at home, for in this case it was worth daring the watchfulness of the neighbours, especially considering that arriving as she did before he came back they might well think that she had come on some neighbourly errand in bringing shopping or to see that all was well in the house, there would be waiting for him Madame Collins, Marguerite⁠—Rita, he called her nowadays. And they would have the whole afternoon and evening before them. She would not be leaving before dark. It would be a wonderful day. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow you die. Mr. Marble ate, and most decidedly he drank, and he was merry as well, if such a term can be applied to his nightmare feeling of wild abandon. And the abandon was only possible because he was at 53 Malcolm Road, and able to make sure that there was no chance of his dying suddenly yet awhile.

John came into the dining-room. There was no one there. But the sight of the room brought the first chill to his heart. The gilded furniture blazed tawdrily in the fading sunlight; the room was in an indescribable muddle: dirty dishes and empty bottles were littered about it, and cigarette ash and cigarette ends were strewn over the floor. And in the room there was a subtle and distasteful blend of scents. Overlying the stale tobacco smell and the fustiness of unopened windows was the smell of spilt drink, and permeating the whole there was yet another odour, slight yet penetrating⁠—a stale, unpleasant smell as of degraded hyacinths. John’s nose wrinkled in distaste as the vile reek assailed his nostrils. The drink, and the tobacco, and the fustiness, and the muddle he could account for, and he had been prepared for them on a smaller scale. But this other scent, irritating his clean boy’s palate, was different. It was more unclean even than the others.

He left the room hurriedly. He had already half decided that his father was not at present in the house. He set his foot on the stairs to go to his own room to open the windows, open them wide, so that the clean evening air would circulate there at any rate, but he withdrew it as a thought struck him. Most probably his father was in the back room⁠—it had been his habit for a long time now to sit there on most occasions. If he were there, and if, as John reluctantly admitted to himself was most likely, he were drinking, it would be well for him to go in and report his arrival as soon as might be. His father would be furious if he were in the house without his knowledge. John walked back to the drawing-room, turned the handle of the door, and entered.

But he went no farther than just beyond the threshold. There he stopped, for a sickening, hellish two seconds, while the hyacinth scent rushed in greater volume upon him, its presence now explained, and while the sight that met his eyes struck him dazed, as might a club. It was sickening, bestial, abominable. He fled in a staggering run, fumbling in dazed haste at the handle of the door. To blend with the tumult of horrible remembrance came the sight, just as he reached free air again, of his father lurching after him, mumbling some wild words which he could not catch, but whose import clearly was for him not to go away, but to stay while he could explain. But John fled.

There was nothing else he could do. Every cell of his body called for air, air, air. Air to flood away that loathsome reek of hyacinths; air to flood his brain and blot away that memory of beastly, drunken nudity; air, air, air!

At the edge of the pavement stood his one trusty friend, the Giant Twin, who never would betray him. He leaned upon the friendly saddle for a second, while his whirling mind recovered itself to the slight degree possible. Air, air, air! He flung himself into the saddle, hands going automatically to ignition and throttle. The engine was still hot, and broke into its old friendly roar as he thrust at the kickstarter. Next second he was gone, wheeling wildly in the road, with the engine bellowing jubilantly as he forced the throttle wider.