War in Heaven - Charles Williams (reading the story of the .TXT) 📗

called ‘brainy’. But he seems rather cloudy even for him.”

Later in the day he replied to the camp of the children.

MY DEAR MR. ARCHDEACON,

—The fact is that the paragraph you refer to was cut out by Sir Giles Tumulty at the last moment. This puts us in a mild fix, because I suppose technically proofs in a publisher’s office are private, till the book is published. And after, for that matter. I am given to understand by the people here who have met him that he is the nearest to a compound of a malevolent hyena and an especially venomous cobra that ever appeared in London, and I shrink therefore from officially confirming your remembrance of that paragraph. But you were here, and you saw the proofs, and, if you could conceal the unimportant fact that we showed them to you, write to Sir Giles by all means.

This sounds as if I were proposing an immorality. But it only means that, while I can’t officially say ‘Write,’ I am reluctant to say ‘Don’t write.’ Your tact will no doubt discover the wise road. Personally, I hope you’ll find out.

Thank you for your invitation. I may conceivably turn up one day before the month ends.

Did you have a pleasant time in Scotland?

Yours very sincerely,

K. H. MORNINGTON.

At the moment when this letter was being dictated Sir Giles had, in fact, a visitor from Fardles sitting with him; not the Archdeacon, but Mr. Gregory Persimmons. They were speaking in subdued tones, both of them rather greedily, as if they each wanted something from the other, and the subject of their conversation might have eluded Mornington, had he heard it, for a considerable time. When Gregory had been shown in, Sir Giles got up quickly from his table.

“Well?” he said.

Gregory came across to him, saying: “Oh, I’ve got it—a little more trouble than I thought, but I’ve got it. But I don’t quite like doing anything with it… In fact, I’m not quite sure what it’s best to do.”

Sir Giles pushed a chair towards him. “You don’t think,” he said. “What do you want to do?” He sat down again as he spoke, his little eager eyes fixed on the other, with a controlled but excited interest. Persimmons met them with a sly anxiety in his own.

“I want something else first,” he said. “I want that address.”

“Pooh,” Sir Giles said, “that won’t help you. Tell me more about this other thing first. Do you notice anything about it? How does it affect you?”

Gregory considered. “Not at all, I think,” he said. “It’s just an ordinary piece of work—with a curious smell about it sometimes.”

“Smell?” Sir Giles said. “Smell? What sort of smell?”

“Well,” Persimmons answered, “it’s more like ammonia than anything else; a sort of pungency. But I only notice it sometimes.”

“I knew a cannibal chief in Nigeria who said the same thing,” Sir Giles said musingly. “Not about that, of course, and not ammonia. It was a traditional taboo of the tribe—the dried head of a witch-doctor that was supposed to be a good omen to his people. He said it smelt like the fire that burned the uneaten offal of their enemies. Curious—the same notion of cleansing.”

Gregory sniggered. “It’ll take Him a good deal of ammonia to clean things out,” he said. “But it’d be like Him to use ammonia and the Bible and that kind of thing.”

Sir Giles switched back to the subject. “And what are you going to do with it?” he asked alertly.

Gregory eyed him. “Never mind,” he said. “Or, rather, why do you want to know?”

“Because I like knowing these things,” Sir Giles answered. “After all, I saved it for you when you asked me, on condition that you told me about your adventures, or let me see them for myself. You’re going mad, you know, Persimmons, and I like watching you.”

“Mad?” Gregory said, with another snigger. “You don’t go mad this way. People like my wife go mad, and Stephen. But I’ve got something that doesn’t go mad. I’m getting everything so.” He stretched out both arms and pressed them downwards with an immense gesture of weight, as if pushing the universe before and below him. “But I want the ointment.”

“Better leave it alone,” Sir Giles said tantalizingly. “It’s tricky stuff, Persimmons. A Jew in Beyrout tried it and didn’t get back. Filthy beast he looked, all naked and screaming that he couldn’t find his way. That was four years ago, and he’s screaming the same thing still, unless he’s dead. And there was another fellow in Valparaiso who got too far to be heard screaming; he died pretty soon, because he’d forgotten even how to eat and drink. They tried forcible feeding, I fancy, but it wasn’t a success: he was just continually sick. Better leave it alone, Persimmons.”

“I tell you I’m perfectly safe,” Gregory said. “You promised, Tumulty, you promised.”

“My lord God,” Sir Giles said, “what does that matter? I don’t care whether I promised or not; I don’t care whether you want it or not; I only wonder whether I shall get more from—” He broke off. “All right,” he said, “I’ll give you the address—94, Lord Mayor Street, Finchley Road. Somewhere near Tally Ho Corner, I think. Quite respectable and all that. The man in Valparaiso was a solicitor. It’s in the middle classes one finds these things easiest. The lower classes haven’t got the money or the time or the intelligence, and the upper classes haven’t got the power or intelligence.”

Gregory was writing the address down, nodding to himself as he did so; then he looked at a clock, which stood on the writing-table, pleasantly clutched in a dried black hand set in gold. “I shall have time to-day,” he said. “I’ll go at once. I suppose he’ll sell it me? Yes, of course he will, I can see to that.”

“It’ll save you some time and energy,” Sir Giles said, “if you mention me. He’s a Greek of sorts—I’ve forgotten his name. But he doesn’t keep tons of it, you know. Now, look here, Persimmons. This is two things you have got out of me, and I’ve had nothing in return. You’d better ask me down to wherever you hatch gargoyles. I can’t come till after Monday because I’m speaking at University College then. I’ll come next Wednesday. What’s the station? Fardles? Send me a card to tell me the best afternoon train and have it met.”

Gregory promised in general terms to do this, and as quickly as he could got away. An hour after he had hunted out Lord Mayor Street.

It was not actually quite so respectable as Sir Giles had given him to understand. It had been once, no doubt, and was now half-way to another kind of respectability, being in the disreputable valley between two heights of decency. There were a sufficient number of sufficiently dirty children playing in the road to destroy privacy without achieving publicity: squalor was leering from the windows and not yet contending frankly and vainly with grossness. It was one of those sudden terraces of slime which hang over the pit of hell, and for which beastliness is too dignified a name. But the slime was still only oozing over it, and a thin cloud of musty pretence expanded over the depths below.

At one end of the road three shops huddled together in the thickest slime; a grocer’s at the corner, flying the last standard of respectability in an appeal towards the Finchley Road some couple of yards away—like Roland’s horn crying to Charlemagne. At the far end of the street a public house signalized the gathering of another code of decency and morals which might in time transform the intervening decay. Next to the grocer’s was a sweet-shop, on which the dingy white letters ADBU OC A appeared like a charm, and whose window displayed bars of chocolate even more degradingly sensual than the ordinary kind. Next to this was the last shop, a chemist’s. Its window had apparently been broken some time since and very badly mended with glass which must have been dirty when it was made, suggesting a kind of hypostatic union between clearness and dinginess. Nor, since the breakage, had the occupant, it seemed, troubled to re-dress the window; a few packets of soap and tooth-paste masked their own purpose by their appearance. Persimmons pushed open the door and, first looking to see that the shop was empty, went quietly in.

A young man was lounging behind the counter, but he did no more than look indolently at his customer. Persimmons tried to close the door and failed, until the other said “Push it at the bottom with your foot,” when he succeeded, for the door shut with an unexpected crash. Gregory came to the counter and looked at the shopman. He might be Greek, as Sir Giles had said, he might be anything, and the name over the door had been indecipherable. The two looked at one another silently.

At last Persimmons said: “You keep some rather out of the way drugs and things, don’t you?”

The other answered wearily: “Out of the way? I don’t know what you mean—out of the way? Nothing’s out of the way.”

“Out of the ordinary way,” Gregory said quickly and softly, “the way everyone goes.”

“They go nowhere,” the Greek said.

“But I go,” Persimmons answered, with the same swiftness as before. “You have something for me.”

“What I have is for buyers,” the other said, “all I have is for buyers. What do you want and what will you pay?”

“I think I have paid a price,” Gregory said, “but what more you ask you shall have.”

“Who sent you here?” the Greek asked.

“Sir Giles Tumulty,” said Gregory, “and others. But the others I cannot name. They say”—his voice began to tremble—“that you have an ointment.”

“I have many precious things.” The answer came out of an entire weariness which seemed to take from the adjective all its meaning. “But some of them are not for sale except to buyers.”

“I have bought everything.” Gregory leaned forward. “The time has come for me to receive.”

Still the other made no movement. “The ointment is rich and scarce and strange,” he said. “How do I know that you are worth a gift? And what will my master say if I mistake?”

“I cannot prove myself to you,” Gregory answered. “That I know of it— is not that enough?”

“It is not enough,” the other said. “But I have a friendship for all who are in the way. And priceless things are without any price. If you are not worth the gift, the gift is worth nothing to you. Have you ever used the ointment?”

“Never,” Gregory said; “but it is time, I am sure it is time.”

“You think so, do you?” the Greek said slowly. “There comes a time when there is nothing left but time—nothing. Take it if you like.”

Still with the minimum of movement, he put out his hand, opened a drawer in the counter, and pushed on to it a little cardboard box, rather greasy and dented here and there.

“Take it,” he said. “It will only give you a headache if you are not in the way.”

Gregory caught up the box and hesitated. “Do you want money?” he asked.

“It is a gift, but not a gift,” the other answered. “Give me what you will for a sign.”

Gregory put some silver on the counter and backed toward the door. But the same difficulty that had met him in closing it now held it fast. He pulled and pushed and struggled with it, and the Greek watched him with a faint smile. Outside it had begun to rain.