The Complete Short Stories: The 1960s

Stoneward walked over to the drug cabinet and began to mix two old-fashioneds, saying casually as he did so, ‘You could say I was an artist in a way. There’s something else that has died out and is now forgotten or forbidden: I’m an artist in the art of life.’

This floored Alexander. He adjusted his damp shirt again and wiped his fingertips on the silk handkerchief. He tried a laugh.

‘Oh, you are mistaken there, Paul. Your concept, if you’ll pardon me, is awry. Life is not an art. It’s – well, it’s natural. I don’t intend any rudeness when I say you are mistaken. But life, well, it’s just something you live, I guess. I know Penelope would see it like that. You just live life; it doesn’t need any thought. Not the way business needs thought, for instance. I can’t see what you mean. I mean, I just don’t see it.’

Carrying the two glasses carefully, Stoneward brought them over to the low oval table and set them down. He produced a box of mescahales and a lighter and set those down. He waved his hand to the chairs, sitting in one when his guest dubiously did and curling his long legs under him.

‘Penelope is a very attractive name,’ he said ingratiatingly.

‘Oh yes, a very attractive name. My favourite name, in fact,’ Alexander said, grateful as a dog for the abrupt change of subject.

‘Well,’ Stoneward said, raising his glass, ‘Here’s to the widow of bashful fifteen and to the cadaver of forty, to the clean little woman who’s slightly unclean and the sports girl who’s out-and-out sporty.’

‘I hadn’t heard that one before,’ Alexander said, with glum embarrassment, again examining his toe-caps. He leant well forward and pursed his thick mauve lips to drink.

‘Let’s talk intimately,’ Stoneward said, as if struck by this sudden good idea. ‘Just you and I, Mr Nigel Alexander, with no souls barred. In every age, in every clime, a man’s or a woman’s breast harbour secrets – nothing bad, just little sensitive things to be kept away from the common gaze. Clouds of immortality and suchlike lush things. Let’s have ours out now, right here, confidentially, and see how intimate we can get. What say?’

A driblet went down the plumpening chin and plopped on the table top. The hankie appeared and mopped the plop. The plump hand waved away a proffered mescahale.

‘Frankly, I don’t follow your meaning, Paul. I have no secrets. Well – business secrets, naturally … But I think you are presuming just a little on our acquaintanceship, if I may be allowed to put it that way. Secrets? Why should a normal man have secrets?’

‘Penelope,’ Stoneward barked, shooting out his legs, dropping his voice and repeating, ‘Penelope: no secrets from her? Not even teeny, weeny ones?’

‘No, no, not even – er, teeny, weeny ones. I can say that quite honestly. I love my wife very dearly, Mr Stoneward, the way a decent citizen should, please believe me. Any secrets we may have are very properly shared. Furthermore, as a property owner, I feel I have every right … every right to say … the gosh … every right …’

He had drained his glass and now he was asleep. He rolled over like a bullock on clover, beginning to snore as the knockout drops took firmer hold of him. The lines of his face grew relaxed and generous.

‘Every right!’ Stoneward echoed, standing over him. ‘Yes, you’ve every right to be caught like a porker in a trap. You didn’t want to come here, yet you had to, because you scented loneliness, sniffed it right up your old nostrils. You thought it was like calling to like, you pomaded porker, because inside – though you don’t know it! – you’re just as miserable as all the other Normals. No, that’s foisting my diagnosis onto him. He hasn’t enough know-how to be miserable; that takes talent. He’s just a bucket of lard.’

Bending, he felt distastefully inside the breast pocket of the sleeping man, drawing out his wallet. In it was a red identity card stamped NORMAL. Sure it was normal – it was so normal, only one man in a million was anything else these days. On the back cover of the folder, under the bovinely solemn reproduction of Mr Nigel Hamilton Alexander’s physiognomy, were his home and his business addresses.

‘Good.’ Stoneward said. He picked the lighter from the table, ignited it, and extinguished it against the grey spread of Alexander’s underjowl. The sleeping man never stirred.

Saying ‘Good’ again, Stoneward went over to the phone and dialled. He had thought of an artistic touch. Switching off the vision, he waited for a female voice to coo ‘N-Compass Co. Coverage and Publicity,’ and then asked for Johnny Flower.

‘The boss won’t be in today, Johnny,’ he said apologetically, when the clerk’s dime-a-dozen purr replied. ‘I wouldn’t like this bit of news to get around, but Nigel Alexander is off on a benzedrine bust with a busty junkie called Jean. She’ll toss him right back at you when she’s finished with him.’

He cut off the incoherent noises at the other end of the line, smiled affectionately to himself and dialled through to Civilian Sanctions. He tuned the vision circuits in again in time to see the girl at the main desk switch him right through to the Commissioner.

‘Beynon?’ Stoneward said. He was always clipped staccato, every inch the operative with Commissioner Beynon, because that was how he responded to Beynon’s personality. ‘I’m on a new consignment from date. Target: Citizen BIOX 95005, Alexander, N.H. Usual objective: to awaken the man’s dormant powers of life-awareness. Strictly off the record, I don’t think Alexander has any to awaken.’

‘Don’t make this job too expensive,’ Beynon warned. ‘The Peace Department are having a stiff enough job as it is convincing the Police that you have Congress backing. I advise you to go easy, Stoneward.’

‘Message received and understood,’ Stoneward said. ‘Everything fine and formal, Normal.’

Beynon cut contact, turning to me. ‘How I’d like to see that louse behind bars!’ he exclaimed. ‘I can quite grasp that ultimately he may be doing good, but I don’t like to see nice, honest citizens suffer; and I don’t like the obvious pleasure he gets out of it all. What do you think he’s up to, Kelly?’

‘He’ll be after Alexander’s wife now,’ I told the Commissioner, ‘because that’s the way his nasty little mind works.’

She stood with a vase full of cactus dahlias in one hand. She wore a little apron over a fawn and white dress. She had curly chestnut hair and surprising grey eyes. She was slenderly tenderly shaped. She was some years younger than her husband. She smiled rather helplessly, entirely charmingly.

‘I was just doing the flowers,’ she said.

‘I won’t keep you long, Mrs Alexander – Penelope,’ Stoneward said; he had changed into a dark, dapper suit and looked ceaseless, creaseless. He put a calculated amount of warmth into his voice and added, ‘I’ve so often heard your husband call you Penelope, it seems more natural for me to call you that too. Would you mind?’

‘How long have you known my husband, Mr Stoneward?’ she asked, smiling but ignoring his question.

‘We’ve been friends for years, really close friends,’ Stoneward said, clasping his hands ingeniously to suggest ingenuousness. ‘I’m just so surprised he never mentioned me to you. I mean … why should he have secrets from you?’

The little jab did not appear to sink in. Perhaps Penelope also would prove to be insensitive – but he found himself hoping not. That gentle exterior, it should not be hard to wound.

‘Why indeed?’ she said. ‘How long did you say you have known my husband?’

‘I’ve known Ni since … let’s see … Oh, since seven years or more. We met when he was blowing the fanfares for my book on Human Sex, and that was in twenty fifteen. Come to think of it, perhaps that’s why he never mentions me; sex isn’t always considered respectable. What sort of a reception does it get in this house, Penelope?’

She set the vase with a bump on the window ledge and turned smartly. This girl’s legs consisted of an infinite number of points it was imperative to kiss. Steady, Stoneward, the outward display of her might look lively, but the vital grey matter would be dead: how else explain her marriage to N.H.A.?

‘If you have anything important to say, Mr Stoneward, would you please say it and leave? I am rather busy morning.’

‘Yes, I’ve something to say,’ he told her, sitting on the arm of a chair and stretching his legs. He laughed ruefully. ‘Trouble is, I’m not keen to say it. I’m afraid you will be shocked.’

‘If you will tell me, I will tell you if I am shocked,’ she said, attempting to humour him.

‘Okay. Penelope, sweet though you are, Nigel has left you for another woman, the cad.’

‘You are talking nonsense,’ she said.

‘I am speaking the truth. He has tired of you at last, the old dog. Every man his own Romeo.’

‘You are talking nonsense. I don’t believe you have even met my husband,’ she said sharply.

‘He has gone off with a blonde double-breasted girl called Jean with hep hips and sigh-size thighs who is old enough to be his mother and big enough to be his father,’ he lied.

She picked up the vase of dahlias again, in case a weapon were needed. All the interlocking softnesses of her face had frozen hard.

‘Get out!’ she shouted. ‘You’re drunk.’

‘No, it’s true!’ Stoneward said, bursting into laughter despite himself. He had spoilt such dramatic scenes before merely because his sense of humour had run away with him – he kept thinking of funny details with which to adorn his theme. ‘It’s all true, Penelope! This wicked girl Jean is old enough to be Ni’s mother. How do I know, you ask? Because she’s my mother! She sure gets around! But this time she’s got a square.’

He rolled into the chair, laughing. Hell, what did it matter how you played your hand when you knew you couldn’t put a foot wrong? That’s what is known as a hand-to-foot existence. It didn’t matter if this chick believed him or not – he had Congress backing. And a free chuckle.

Penelope had moved out with those nicely hinged knees to the call booth in the hall. She dialled angrily and spoke to someone. Sobering, Stoneward sat up and listened. He guessed she was calling Johnny Flower, wanting to know if hubby was under control at the all-N-Compassing office. This was rich! By the shattered look on her face when she returned, slowly, lowly, he knew that he had guessed rightly and Johnny had passed on his little tittle-tattle.

‘I’m truly sorry, Mrs Alexander,’ he said, returning to seriousness to hand out a really corny line. ‘It isn’t that he doesn’t love you any more, it’s just that he fell into temptation. His spirit was willing and his flesh was weak. Try to take it bravely. I don’t think he’ll ever come back to you, but you can always find another man, you know. You’re man-shaped!’

‘I don’t believe you,’ she said and burst into tears. With a gallant effort, she tried to check herself but failed; she settled herself in a chair to cry more comfortably. Stoneward went across to her on hands and knees, like a pious panther. When he smoothed her hair, she flicked her head away, continuing to cry

‘You shouldn’t cry,’ he said. ‘Alex was always unfair to you. He left you here shut away. He kept secrets from you. He kept money from you. He never told you about me … I can’t bear to hear you cry. It sounds like termites in a tin beam.’