Читать книгу The Killer and the Slain - Hugh Walpole - Страница 9

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I had better now, I think, jump nine years, for I have much to tell and little time to tell it. The sequence of events that led to my present horrible position began, I think, with a party given by the Tunstalls towards the end of January 1938, a party attended by my wife and myself.

What shall I say here about those nine years? There is so much to say and yet so little. On the outside things were little changed in my life and Eve's. During these years I published two novels, The Gridiron in 1930, and The Gossip-monger in 1936.

The Gridiron, into which I put so much good work--a novel, I am still convinced, with something unique in it, something that has never been done before and will never be done again--appeared and was dead as soon as born. And yet not quite so! For it roused the interest of certain critics, and Rose, the famous novelist, wrote me an enthusiastic letter concerning it. Now I consider Rose's novels very poor indeed--old-fashioned, romantic, platitudinous--but he is a very well known writer and when he reviews a novel he helps, undoubtedly, its popularity. I have often enough inveighed against the practice of one novelist reviewing another novelist and have especially criticized Rose in this connection, but after he had said some fine quotable words about The Gridiron in The Message I felt rather differently about him. His letter to me was kind and enthusiastic, if patronizing, and when I next saw the picture of his high and shining forehead in a newspaper I felt, I must confess, quite friendly towards it.

It was not, however, until 1936 that I published my third novel, The Gossip-monger, and this had a considerable success. I fear that on this occasion I compromised. Why go on for ever writing novels that no one wanted to read? I compromised, as Gissing and many another has been forced to compromise. There was in The Gossip-monger a certain dry humour and irony and it happened that the public fancied in one of the figures of my story a caricature of Rose himself. This helped its sale, and Rose was very magnanimous, alluding, humorously, in his review to the caricature as though he had enjoyed it; as a matter of fact I heard afterwards from a friend of his that it hurt him very much. It was Rose's great ambition in life, I think, to be considered a noble character without being thought at the same time a prig--no easy ambition.

In any case I made some money from The Gossip-monger and my hopes were high. My friends and neighbours in Seaborne when they saw my photograph in The Modern World began to take me more seriously and even ordered my book from the library.

Against this success must be set the fact that, during these years, I had withdrawn more and more into myself.

Before my marriage the shop had been an easy way for me to keep in touch with my fellow human beings. All day I was talking to this person or that; often I must visit a house or a sale, and although I was never a character to whom anyone took a very great liking, yet I had my friends and acquaintances. But after my marriage Eve's great business efficiency made my presence in the shop a superfluity and I visited it less and less. This I found Eve preferred, for she was cleverer at bargains than I and liked best to clinch them in her own way.

After my boy Archie's birth she had only two interests in the world--her shop and her son. She continued her kindly tolerance and marital sufferance to myself, but I knew that I counted nothing in her life. My mother had died a year after Archie's birth. I wish, neither now nor later, to compel any pity, if an eye should fall on this, from any reader. But I suffered, after my mother's death, from a desperate loneliness. The boy, delicate, shy, feminine in his sensitiveness, loved only his mother. His mother loved only him. I, most unfortunately, adored them both. No new situation in this world, but a hard and testing one, especially for a man who could not express himself easily and was always frightened of a rebuff.

My shyness to the outside world was greatly increased by the presence of Tunstall in the town. He immediately, of course, made his mark there. It was known from London that he had an assured position there as a portrait-painter. He was well-off and enjoyed entertaining. He was the friend of everyone, had no social exclusiveness and apparently no pride.

After a time certain stories were current as to his character. He was certainly no strict moralist, but people in general did not mind that so long as he had money and spent it freely.

As a matter of fact he was, during these nine years, away from Seaborne a great deal. His career as a portrait-painter became for a year or two quite spectacular. He painted some fashionable ladies, an actor or two, and actually Rose himself, whose picture by Tunstall, bright, shiny, gravely complacent, was in the Academy of 1936.

That, I fancy, was Tunstall's peak year. His popularity began to decline. Why? He lost his head a little, I should imagine. Went to late parties too often, drank perhaps too much, was too familiar with some of his grand ladies.

At any rate he appeared again towards the end of '37 and informed the town that he was 'fed up' with London, that he had made enough money for the rest of his days and that he would develop down here his talent for landscape painting.

I heard all this from Basil Cheeseman, a friend of his, and about Cheeseman, known to myself and some others as 'The Rat', I must say a word or two. Physically he resembled a rat, for he was a little man with very prominent white sharp upper teeth. He had reddish-brown hair and restless whisky-coloured eyes. When he smiled his teeth jutted out over his lower lip.

He was, and is, an evil little man; a journalist by profession who had settled down in a ramshackle cottage near Seaborne and there indulged in shabby orgies with girls from London or visitors to the resort. He made a living by picking up paragraphs and sending them to London and the provincial papers. He had, and has, as malicious and dirty-minded a soul as exists in the world to-day. He was the very man for Tunstall. He was more evil, I don't doubt, than Tunstall and yet I did not hate him half as much. He had no power over me. I thought of him possibly as a kind of emanation from Tunstall. When Tunstall couldn't come to me himself he sent the Rat instead, and I can see him now with a faint shiny stubble on his cheeks, his projecting teeth and false grin, his restless cat-like eyes. 'He's come back and he's going to stay,' the Rat said, eyeing me curiously. His malicious curiosity knew no limit. He had long ago discovered my hatred and fear of Tunstall, but what was Tunstall's hold over me? I did not look as though I had any vices. And, farther than that, why did Tunstall bother about me at all? What was my attraction for Tunstall?

He never discovered the answer to these questions, and I think at last he decided that the solution was connected with my wife.

And now I must try to explain one of the driving decisive elements in this case--Eve, my wife, from the very first moment, liked Tunstall. At least she did not dislike him. I must say here at once that no one could dislike Leila Tunstall, Tunstall's wife. This was a little round pale-faced woman whose face was almost deformed.

It was not deformed, although the face was definitely twisted, and yet where the twist was you could never decide. She was as plain as she could be but most terribly nice. Tunstall had married her for her money, of course, and he took everything she gave him for granted, patronized her, laughed at her. She accepted it all with a smile, very quietly.

You would call her, perhaps, a saint--the only one I have ever known. But not at all a prig. Nothing shocked her. She had a strong sense of humour. She liked to mother everyone. She was a very fine woman.

Oddly enough Eve liked Tunstall more than Mrs. Tunstall. 'Of course she's a good woman,' she said. 'When you're as plain as that it's all that's left you.' Then she added quickly, 'That's cattishness. I'm jealous because she's so much better than me.'

She argued with me on the other side.

'I just can't see what you've got against Jimmie Tunstall.'

'He's foul-minded and foul-living. He's false and treacherous. Vain as a monkey. Greedy.'

'Oh, John, that's jealousy!'

'Jealousy! If I were him I'd shoot myself.'

'He likes you most awfully anyway.'

'He doesn't. He despises me. He likes teasing me, frightening me.'

'Frightening you? What have you got to be frightened of?'

'I don't know. I've always been frightened of him since we were kids.'

Nevertheless during these nine years we did not see so very much of one another. His success kept him in London. Then he and Leila went for a year on a trip round the world. When he did come to Seaborne he was busy with his painting. To my great relief he seemed for a long time to have forgotten all about me. But can you escape anything that is your destiny? I think not.

That was one of the 'turning' moments of my life when Cheeseman told me that Tunstall had come back and was going to stay. I knew it. My throat contracted.

'Things have been going a bit wrong, I fancy,' Cheeseman said with satisfaction. 'He's a bit ratty. Been drinking more than's good for him. Leila's a bit worried. By the way, he said something about you this afternoon.'

'What did he say?' I asked, my heart hammering.

'Oh, only--how's Jacko?'