Fear to Tread Read online

  “I’ll think about it. Come and get your lunch before it gets cold.”

  “That’s to say, if the journey won’t be too much for you—”

  “Now don’t you fuss,” said Mrs. Wetherall, more cheerfully. She had, of course, been fussing herself, but like most women, found instant solace if she could accuse someone else of it. “It’s the principle of the thing that upset me. It’s our parcel. Why should they be allowed to steal it? Can’t we do anything about it, now they’re nationalised?”

  Instead of attempting to unravel this tangled piece of logic, Mr. Wetherall said he would ring the police immediately after lunch.

  He knew that he was not at his best on the telephone. He was very slightly deaf, and was apt to get flustered. The sergeant in charge of the station was plainly neutral. He was not obstructive, nor was he helpful. He took particulars. He spelt Mr. Wetherall’s name wrong, then got it right, then got the address wrong. He, also, wanted to know if there was any proof that the parcel had been dispatched, and when Mr. Wetherall had to admit that there was not, he lost most of his remaining interest. He said he would do what he could. He added that he was afraid there was a lot of pilfering on the railways.

  When Mr. Wetherall was on the point of leaving the house (it would, in many ways, have been easier to have his lunch at a restaurant near the school, but with his wife in her present condition he liked to get back as often as he could) he remembered their plans for the evening.

  “I’d better meet you at Luigi’s,” he said. “I’ll have to go straight there. Ambler’s ill again, and I’ve got to take his drawing-class this afternoon. That’ll mean putting off my specials until after tea, so I shall be late anyway. I’ll see you there at seven.”

  “Do we want to go to Luigi’s?”

  “Why,” said Mr. Wetherall, surprised. “We’ve always liked the food there so much. Do you want something a bit more classy?”

  “Silly,” said his wife. “It’s only that I heard the other day – I think it was Mrs. Ormerod. She was saying that Mrs. Lewis told her – something about the food not being quite clean.”

  “I’d rather believe my own eyes,” said Mr. Wetherall mildly, “than something Mrs. Ormerod said to Mrs. Lewis.”

  “Well, I always thought it was very nice, too.”

  “Luigi’s let it be, then. If you observe so much as a single cockroach in the minestrone, we can always go on somewhere else.”

  “Don’t be horrid,” said Mrs. Wetherall.

  III

  There are people who cannot draw. Mr. Wetherall was one of them. In a way this was odd, because he had a good appreciation of line and an eye for the beauty in unlikely places. It was his execution which was hopeless. He often wished that the training he had received, a scrupulously careful training which had covered every conceivable subject from Bible study to eurythmics, had dealt with this important matter. For he was convinced that it was important. For one thing, the boys enjoyed it, and that was half the battle in any school subject. Futhermore he was certain, in an instinctive way, that it did them good.

  His usual solution to the problem was to announce that the hour would be devoted to free inspiration, then to allot a suitable subject – (the choice was not easy. He still remembered some of the unfortunate results when he had asked the senior class to exercise its imagination on the subject of a Pig in a Poke) – and leave them to it.

  That afternoon, after some thought, he selected “A Street Accident” and retired to the master’s desk to correct history papers.

  For half an hour there was silence, broken only by some hard breathing, the scrape of feet, and the squeak of pencils. Red crayon seemed to be in demand. At the end of this time Mr. Wetherall climbed to his feet and toured the class-room to give an interim judgement on the results.

  In the back row, somewhat to his surprise, he found a boy with an untouched sheet of drawing paper in front of him. It was Crowdy, a quiet creature, whom he liked; according to Mr. Ambler, something of an artist.

  “What is it?” he said. “No inspiration?”

  “I was just wondering, sir,” said Crowdy, with a blush, “what a car would look like upside-down.”

  “Why not draw it the right way up, and then turn the paper round.”

  Crowdy looked up with faint scorn and said: “I didn’t mean resting on its back, sir. I meant the moment it hit the road, after being turned over. Why, the wheels might still be spinning – like this.”

  He picked up the pencil and quickly drew four or five lines. Thinking it over afterwards, Mr. Wetherall was prepared to swear that it was not more than five. And in front of his eyes an accident was born. He could see at once what must have happened. The car, cornering too fast on a greasy road, had turned, first on to its side and then right over. He could see by the crumpling of the coachwork and the distortion of the body how powerful the impact must have been. The drawing was foreshortened and the nearest wheel, unnaturally large, was spinning; it was actually spinning in front of Mr. Wetherall’s eyes.

  “Yes,” he said. “Yes. I see what you mean. I should go on with that. It looks very promising.”

  He walked back to his desk aware that, in a small way, the thing might have happened which every schoolmaster dreams will happen to him. That he may be privileged to act midwife at the birth of genius; to watch the infant Keats scratching his fingers through his hair and his nib through his first halting sonnet; to listen to the stubby, chilblain-covered fingers of the young Beethoven stumbling along the octave. It is the most intoxicating thought a schoolmaster can have. Mr. Wetherall felt partially intoxicated as he went back to his desk.

  He made one more round, towards the end of the hour, and commended several of the more dashing efforts. They were none of them lacking in incident. In one a fire brigade had become involved with a squadron of tanks. In another a lady had been cut completely in two. Crowdy had blocked in a little background, but had done nothing much else to his sketch. It was entirely in hard pencil, in line, with no shading at all.

  “Cleanly sir, you went to the heart of the matter,” he found himself saying as he collected the drawings and dismissed the class.

  That wasn’t quite right. It wasn’t “heart of the matter.”

  “Cleanly, sir, you went to the core of the matter.”

  It was a poem by James Kirkup in some paper or literary magazine. Mr. Wetherall had a good visual memory, if he cared to use it. Sometimes for a bet, he would read once, and then repeat, a whole paragraph of prose. More often it was scraps of verse that stayed in his mind.

  This came now, out of its pigeon hole.

  “A calligraphic master, improvising, you invent

  The first incision, and no poet’s hesitation

  Before his snow-blank page mars your intent:

  The flowing stroke is drawn like an uncalculated inspiration.”

  That was right. That was absolutely right. No hesitation. No fumbling. “An uncalculated inspiration.” Come to think of it the poem was not really about drawing. It was a description of a famous surgeon, in the theatre, performing a difficult operation. But the simile was just. As Mr. Wetherall looked at the clean lines of the sketch he felt an inner certainty that the hand which had drawn them must one day claim recognition.

  Then his practical sense asserted itself. Crowdy would be sixteen at the end of the summer. The next step was therefore important. After some thought and a hunt through a well-used address book, Mr. Wetherall took up his pen and wrote:

  “I’ve got a boy here who looks as if he might be useful to you. I’m no art expert, as you know, but he draws a neat, clean line and has lots of self-confidence. He’s leaving here in July. Would your people like to take him on? The only thing is, I’m afraid there’s no question of apprenticeship. His family have got no money at all, so he’ll have to be paid something, even when he’s learning. I expect he can run errands and pour out the tea. How’s Wright getting on? Best wishes to your wife and family.”

 
The letter was addressed to the Managing Director of Lithography and Artists Services Ltd. It was on occasions such as this that Mr. Wetherall, who was an inverted snob of a not uncommon type, was thankful that he had been at Oxford and had made, and kept, a few useful friends.

  After tea, which was brought in by Miss Donovan – her heart was kind, but her taste in pastries was more flamboyant than Mr. Wetherall’s – and after dealing with the not unjustified complaints of Mr. Edgecumb that the Examination Sub-Committee had introduced Elementary Physics into the curriculum whilst the Finance Sub-Committee had allowed no expenditure of any sort on equipment, and after devoting an hour to the special coaching of four candidates for future University Scholarships, and after reading and signing fifteen papers produced by Miss Donovan, Mr. Wetherall sat back in his chair, looked at the clock which now said half-past six, and sighed once more.

  He was wondering, and not for the first time, whether he was really suited to his job. He liked boys. He enjoyed teaching, particularly the teaching of the less precise subjects, like history and English. On the other hand he found the routine of administration and management increasingly distasteful. Committees terrified him.

  IV

  Having allowed plenty of time, he naturally picked up a bus at once, and arrived at Deptford Broadway with ten minutes to spare. All its lights were blazing, but Luigi’s had a deserted look, and when he got inside he saw that only one of the tables was occupied by a depressed-looking couple who were talking in whispers. Three months before, at that hour, the place would have been crowded.

  Mr. Wetherall sat down at his usual table, opposite the service door, and picked up the handwritten menu. So far as he could judge the food was as varied and attractive as ever. At that moment Luigi came through the door. His name, actually, was Castelbonato but the South Bank called him Luigi on the same principle that led them to call all German waiters Fritz and all French hairdressers Alphonse. His family had been in England for two generations. His turn of phrase was still apt to be foreign, particularly when he was excited, but his accent was purest cockney.

  “What’s up, Luigi? Have you been frightening the customers away?” Then he saw the look on the little man’s face and felt sorry for him.

  “What’ll it be, Mr. Wetherall?”

  “I think I’ll wait for my wife.”

  The couple at the other table signalled their bill. Luigi went over to them. When he came back he did a thing he had never done before and which, in a trained restaurateur, gave a little indication of how upset he was. He sat down in the chair opposite Mr. Wetherall.

  “You can have what you like,” he said. “Chicken – duck – I’m shutting up tomorrow.”

  “What’s it all about?”

  “No customers.” Luigi waved his hand round the empty room. The bright lights. The clean cloths. The fresh flowers.

  “What’s it all about,” said Mr. Wetherall again.

  Luigi took a deep breath.

  “They bin saying my food’s dirty. They bin coming along here making a fuss. Fortnight ago they come along and find a dead beetle in my ravioli. In my ravioli. Who would be likely to put such filth in, I ask you, them or me? They throw it in my face. A whole plateful—”

  “Who—?” began Mr. Wetherall.

  “Do not ask who. Ask why. I’m tell you. I used to take food from them. There’s no secret. Bacon and sugar. All took it, you understand. I wasn’t the only one. If we couldn’t get it other place, we had to get it from them. Then I wanted to stop, you understand?”

  “I don’t—”

  “They asked too much. Bacon and sugar and butter and tinned meat are good, but they are not good at five and six, six and seven shillings a pound. You can reckon it up for yourself, Mr. Wetherall, you know what I charge. In the West End, perhaps. That’s West End prices. Not here. So I said I must stop. Then they warned me—”

  Luigi suddenly cut off the torrent of his speech, and Mr. Wetherall at last got the chance to say: “Who are these people you’re talking about, Luigi?”

  Luigi was not listening. He had his head half turned, and in the silence that followed they both heard, beyond the service door, the outer door of the kitchen open and shut softly.

  Luigi jumped to his feet and went out through the serving door.

  At that moment Mrs. Wetherall arrived, five minutes late and full of insincere apologies.

  They had, as Luigi had promised, an excellent dinner, but Mr. Wetherall did not find himself enjoying it.

  2

  SOUTH OF THE RIVER. THE USES OF LITHOGRAPHY

  Next morning Mr. Wetherall asked Miss Donovan for her elder brother’s address.

  “Patsy?” said Miss Donovan. “Why, he lives home now, Mr. Wetherall.”

  He was on the point of expressing his surprise when his experience of the South Bank and its problems checked him. There could be reasons why Patsy Donovan and his young wife would have given up their house and gone back to live with one or other of their families; but Peggy might not want to discuss them.

  Patsy was a detective-sergeant, attached for C.I.D. duties to Borough Police Station. Mr. Wetherall had known him, as a boy, in the mid ‘thirties, at the Battersea School at which he had been teaching. Battersea had been Mr. Wetherall’s first impact with the light-hearted, tough-minded, precocious young male who hangs out south of the river. When the wheels of circumstance had brought Mr. Wetherall to the South Borough Secondary School and Sergeant Donovan to the Borough Police Station they had improved this acquaintanceship. More than once they had been able to be useful to one another. It was nearly a year since they had last had occasion to meet.

  “Will he be off duty now?”

  “He’ll be asleep right now,” said Peggy. “He’ll be up by eleven. Should I ask him to come round—?”

  “No. I’m off until lunch. I’ll go and see him.”

  As Peggy was on her way out she stopped for a moment at the door and said: “It’s some time since you seen Patsy last, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’ll find him changed a bit.”

  “We are none of us static,” said Mr. Wetherall.

  “I suppose that’s right.”

  “A doctor once told me that you change your blood and your character completely every seven years.”

  “There now!” said Miss Donovan. “I’d better fetch you those milk returns and you can sign them up before you go.”

  The Donovan house was one in a row of the oldest houses in the district, a miracle of eroded brick, decaying wood and blackened stone, a sepulchre, whitened daily by the power of Mrs. Donovan’s arm. Mr. Wetherall went round to the back and found the sergeant at breakfast in the kitchen. He was alone in the house, for his mother, though over sixty, still went out to do a morning’s work at a block of offices near the Elephant, and Mr. Donovan had long ago drunk himself into an expensive grave.

  “Why, come in.”

  Mr. Wetherall got his first shock when Sergeant Donovan spoke, and another when he got up and the light fell on his face.

  “I’m sorry. I seem to be disturbing your breakfast.”

  “That’s all right, Mr. Wetherall. Pleased to see you. Sit down.”

  The voice was hard. The red-headed boy and the big, well-made, pleasant young man had both gone. In their place was this heavy, and somehow rather dangerous-looking person.

  “Some time since I’ve had the pleasure of seeing you, Mr. Wetherall.”

  “I expect we’ve both been busy.”

  Mr. Wetherall was playing for time. He was wondering whether the new Sergeant Donovan could help him. Might it be better to temporise – something about Sammy or Peggy – anything would do. He was aware that the sergeant was looking at him steadily over his tea-cup.

  In the end he said: “I came across something last night that I didn’t much like. There wasn’t anything I could do about it, but I felt it might help if I passed it on. It was at Luigi’s—”

  He told the whole stor
y.

  It was difficult to say if Sergeant Donovan was interested or not. He sat very still whilst Mr. Wetherall was talking and at the end he said:

  “Your idea about this, is it that someone’s been starting a whisper about Luigi’s food?”

  “That’s what he says.”

  “To run him out of business?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Anyone whose restaurant does bad, Mr. Wetherall, could think up a story like that. It’d be a sort of excuse, wouldn’t it?”

  “But he said they actually came and pretended to find insects and dirt in his food. They made a fuss in public. That sort of thing—”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “He said that he used to get food from these people – black market stuff, I suppose. Then they put their prices up, and he couldn’t pay. So they said, if he didn’t pay they would drive him out of business.”

  “Well now,” said Sergeant Donovan. “Who are ‘they’? Who are these people he’s talking about?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Any suggestions?”

  “No. He just said ‘they’ and ‘them’. You could see he was nervous about them. In fact, if he hadn’t been so angry about it I don’t think he would have said anything.”

  “I can believe that bit all right,” said Donovan, with rather a tight smile. “Did he actually say that it was black market food he’d been buying.”

  “Not in so many words – I mean, I couldn’t swear to it in a court of law.”

  “You won’t be asked to do that,” said the sergeant, reading Mr. Wetherall’s thoughts accurately. “It’s not Mister Luigi What’s-is-name you’ve got to worry about. He’s just the meat in the trap. He’s the worm on the hook. Once people like him start fooling round with funny stuff they always end up in trouble, one side or the other. It’s the people who supply the Luigis that I’d like to have a quiet word with. Or the people who supply them. Just a quiet word.”