Alan Hunter - Gently in the Sun

He kept his eyes fixed on the crowd, trying to interpret their reactions. They must surely let him know if the artist made a definite move! But the murmur had died away and a head or two was turning. Whatever he had done was over now, he must have resumed his original posture.

‘Simmonds… I know you can hear me!’

Again that slight scraping and a ripple from the crowd.

‘Don’t give them what they want — you’re letting them drive you into it. Get back on the roof and let them see that you despise them!’

‘It’s too late… too late for that.’

He caught his breath at the sound of the voice. Simmonds was closer than he expected — was he bending down towards Gently?

‘Don’t you understand? They’ve finished me.’

‘Nonsense! Get back on the roof.’

‘No… I’m finished… they’ve murdered me! If you want to hang someone… why not them?’

The ripple of the crowd had increased to a buzzing. They couldn’t understand what it was that was going on. An alert reporter was stealing quietly towards the church door: Gently made a dumbshow to Dutt, who disappeared down the stairway.

‘You’re taking it the wrong way, Simmonds! Can’t we talk it over?’

‘It’s too late, I tell you… there’s nothing else left.’

‘Would you have acted like this if your mother had been alive?’

‘Don’t talk about her! You’d never understand.’

‘She’d have expected better of you.’

‘Please… don’t talk about her.’

Yes, he must be stooping somehow, on his bare six inches of ledge. Gently could see the image of it reflected in several hundred pairs of eyes. He had moved along, and stooped — had he then such a clear head for heights? As though to confirm the guess, one of the photographers took a fresh shot.

‘Can’t you see what it is they’ve done? My life… it’s been taken away! I can’t ever go back again… they’ve destroyed everything that I was. It doesn’t matter if I’m guilty or not. All the same, they’ve finished me off!’

‘And you’re going to let them do it?’

‘It’s done… it’s no use pretending.’

‘There’s your art. Are you forgetting that?’

‘They’ve got that too… everything, they’ve taken!’

‘No.’ Gently shook his head from habit. ‘That’s one thing they can’t take. The rest, perhaps, you’ll have to begin again, but nothing can make you other than a painter. There you’ve got them beaten before they start.’

‘I tell you they’ve killed me. I can never paint again.’

‘That’s what you think now.’

‘It’s true. I’m done for!’

‘You are, if you’re not going to give yourself a chance.’

Gently hung on a moment, uncertain of what he was going to say. He had never been much of a hand at a sermon. For the best part of one’s life one was dealing with trivia, and then, when the need arose… was it the contact he needed?

‘Take a week, take a month, take a year to think it over. There’s plenty of time when it comes to dying. They may have killed something, but that isn’t important. It’s only the past that’s done for: there’s always the future.’

‘There isn’t any future.’

‘Yes there is. It’s always there. And there’s always part of us dying to make room for what’s coming along.’

‘But not in this way.’

‘In this or another. Did you want to stay put, and be exactly as you were?’

‘You’re twisting it… making it seem…’

‘I’m telling the truth, and you know it.’

‘It doesn’t apply!’

‘It applies to all the world.’

If he could only see what was going on above him! The voice, by itself, didn’t tell him what he wanted to know. Down below they were quite still, sensing that something was in the balance. From the direction of the stairway he could hear Dutt’s voice in altercation.

‘Are you still listening to me, Simmonds?’

At all events, he must keep him talking. Every minute he could gain was swinging the chance in his direction.

‘Do you think it will bring her back, your doing a silly thing like this? Is throwing yourself off there going to prove that you were innocent?’

‘I don’t care about that now!’

‘Not that someone murdered Rachel?’

‘It doesn’t matter any more… everyone knows that it was me.’

‘They don’t know anything of the sort.’

‘Oh yes they do! You, and the rest. It’s no good saying anything. I’m the one they want to hang.’

‘Listen to me, Simmonds!’

‘No… I’m tired of listening…’

‘I’m the one who counts, not that pack of wolves down there. And I haven’t charged you, have I? I haven’t even put it to you! At the moment you’re simply a material witness, and I don’t expect that you’ll be anything else. So why not stop playing up to them and come back inside?’

‘I’ve told you… I don’t care.’

‘You do, and you’re going to show it.’

‘They can think what they like — only let me alone! I don’t want to talk and I’m tired of listening.’

A movement below him warned Gently that he was losing. The photographers, who had relaxed, now froze again behind their cameras. The one lens was staring towards him like a petrified eye, one was slightly tilted, one riveted upon the turf… and once more, from overhead, came the sound of a scraping shoe.

‘Simmonds!’

He felt the panic racing in his veins.

‘Simmonds!’

‘Go away. I won’t listen any more.’

Suddenly the scraping became a scrabbling noise, violent and desperate: the sound of a foot searching madly for a hold. The up-turned faces swayed as though caught by a wind, some were being hidden, some twisted away. And then — it stopped, that scrabbling. The foot had found its hold. And a groan drifted up like the moaning of the sea.

‘Simmonds!’

Gently found himself whispering it too softly to be heard. He didn’t need telling that he had lost in that encounter. Simmonds had heard what he could say, and he daren’t say any more: now, a repetition of it might be hastening the end. At least the artist had struggled when he felt himself beginning to slip.

‘I’ve locked the door down there, sir.’

Dutt toiled wearily out of the stairway.

‘They was making a fuss about the church being public, but I barged them outside and turned the key pretty quick. I reckoned it wasn’t public, sir, unless we said so.’

Gently shrugged, passing a dirty hand over his face. He could still hear the scuffling of that fear-stricken foot. Would he have watched as Simmonds’s body went plunging past him… would he have held to his post during the next few seconds?

‘The Fire Service — why the devil isn’t it here?’

Dutt echoed the shrug. ‘Will it be any use, sir?’

‘That isn’t the point — it ought to be here! Isn’t it part of their job to handle a business of this kind?’

He went stumping down the stairs in a blaze of irrational anger. Twenty minutes had passed and no fire engine arrived! But at heart he knew it was because he would never have watched that fall… and because, in turning away from it, he would have in some way felt traitorous.

Towards whom? Towards what? — he didn’t want to understand! There was nothing to be done except to be angry with the Fire Service.

Under the tower a fresh enterprise had engaged the crowd’s attention. The vicar was ascending the ladder, presumably with the object of addressing Simmonds. He was a neat, smallish man who carried his three-score years with a flourish; he had short grey hair and a pallid, boyish face. He made no bones at all about frisking up the ladder.

‘Young man up there!’